


Tamriel: World at War

by HelloMyNameIsEd



Category: Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-09-22
Updated: 2016-11-27
Packaged: 2018-08-16 01:40:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 24,300
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8081701
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HelloMyNameIsEd/pseuds/HelloMyNameIsEd
Summary: The year is 4E 205. Tensions have flared up once again between the Aldmeri Dominion and the Empire, inciting the beginning of the second Great War. While their armies move to clash in the mainland, their navies set sail to wrest control of the seas from each other. But when an ambitious mage's experimental spell to help the Imperial Navy secure victory at sea doesn't work as intended, the unthinkable happens: the errant spell deposits right before the dispatched Imperial fleet an armada from another time and another world, similarly embroiled in its own global conflict — the American invasion force of Peleliu, 1944.





	1. Chapter 1

**ABECEAN SEA** **  
**IMPERIAL COMBINED FLEET****  
**0800 HOURS**  
**15 OF HEARTHFIRE 4E 205**

 

Standing upon the deck of his flagship, Admiral Marcus Atilius Regulus looked up at the blue expanse overhead. His promise of good sailing weather lay in the few small clouds he could just see that floated lazily along, carried by a swift wind that also tugged at his light blue cloak and played with the salt-and-pepper hair on his head, bereft of his usual crested helmet. The 45 year old Admiral breathed in the warm tropical sea air, listening as somewhere behind him, his sailors sang a lively sea shanty about the wonders of women across Tamriel as they checked the rigging on their vessel's sails and mast. Nothing in the lively atmosphere suggested that just a few months ago, the Second Great War began when the Aldmeri Dominion declared war on the Tamrielic Empire once again.

  
Admiral Regulus wondered, grimly, how many of his men would still be with him and singing by the end of the day. There simply was no telling, given the nature of their combat mission: destroy the Dominion fleet out of Firsthold that sought to capture the Imperial docks and destroy the fleet stationed at Stirk Island, off the western coast of Cyrodiil, or recapture the docks and establish a beachhead to retake the island. Stirk Island was to be the staging point for their assault on Anvil, which had been taken by Dominion forces out of Valenwood in a savage blitz during the first month of the war.

  
The Imperial dropped his gaze to look around him, at the large fleet sailing with him a few hundred miles southeast of Stros M'kai. One hundred and twenty Imperial vessels sliced through the calm, dark sea, white sails billowing outward as the wind propelled them: galleasses with naval artillery for long range strikes, dromonds carrying Imperial Marines for boarding operations, and several huge galleons, including Regulus' own flagship: a 300 foot-long, 2000-ton galleon called the  _Leviathan_. One of the largest galleons at sea, she was a titan amongst titans, and she bristled with deck-mounted arcane ballistae and a heavy naval trebuchet. A regiment of Imperial Battlemages added to her firepower, and a soul gem-powered arcane shielding system protected the hull.

All the ships that made up his Imperial Combined Fleet had initially set sail from varying ports around High Rock, with the hope of gathering as much seapower they could spare in a port near Daggerfall before setting off to fight their enemy, only stopping to replenish their supplies at the port in Stros M'kai before continuing along their southeastern heading.   
  
Despite the fact that he had such a powerful fleet at his disposal, Admiral Regulus knew that the coming battle at sea would only be won by skill, both of commanders and of crew, and the Dominion's navy was something to be feared. It was one of the most powerful ones in Tamriel. If his fleet came out victorious, there might not be much of it left floating.  
  
"Admiral Regulus?"  
  
He blinked once, before turning to regard the High Elf who had spoken. "Lieutenant Volanare," the Imperial greeted with a head bow, finding himself needing to look up slightly to meet the mer's eyes. Trechtus Volanare was as tall as any of his kind and as skilled as their reputation went, but without the disdain and hatred of anyone who wasn't an Altmer. He could still be as conceited a mer as any at times, but he made up for it with charm and good humor. The Admiral was glad that to call the elf his friend, even if it his kind were threatening to destroy the Empire. He knew he could be trusted.  
  
"Is it time for the ritual already?" the Admiral asked as the Altmer came up alongside him. He fancied he could see a wan, blue shimmer play across the surface of the elf's enchanted robes, like light glittering against the surface of a pool of water.  
  
"It is," Trechtus affirmed with a nod. "The rest of my fellow mages should be going out onto the decks of their ships now. If our cloaked scouting ship’s report is to be believed concerning our foe’s location, then before the hour's out, our enemies at sea should be wasting away in another dimension for the rest of eternity, thanks to my spell."  
  
"If it works," muttered the Admiral.  
  
"You doubt my skill, Marcus?" asked the Altmer, giving him an arched brow. Despite his confident smile, it was a serious question.  
  
"Not at all," the Admiral assured him. "I know you've spent a long time perfecting your spell, and I know how experienced you are in arcane matters. It's not  _you_ I'm worried about; it’s everything else. The other battlemages working with you are not as experienced as you, and you even told me how much magicka it costs and how much skill it takes to use your spell. To say nothing of the fact that this spell of yours is  _experimental,_ and has never actually been used _._ "  
  
Trechtus' features went smooth. "I see your concerns. It's going to be a bit of a gamble, using this spell. But I think we’ll see success. Even if they are Imperials and not Altmer, the men do have quite a lot of experience and skill for their age, they've had time to prepare themselves for this ritual, and they've certainly got the magicka pools to use it, if only just. The spell’s effects will also have such a large range that we will in all likelihood catch our enemies in it — hard to miss with a two hundred nautical mile area of effect. I have confidence in us. Especially since I have this." He pulled out from his robes a small lockbox, gilded and encrusted with rubies.  
  
Admiral Regulus took that in and gave the elf a slow nod, sparing the lockbox a wary look. He knew the exact contents of that lockbox, and it was dangerous. He only tolerated its presence on his ship for the purposes of this mission — the Dominion Navy had been sorely defeating the unprepared Imperial Navy in most sea engagements these past few months. The Empire was getting desperate to win this war. "Very well. I shall trust in your judgement, old friend."  
  
Just then, he saw a bright light shining from the front deck of a galleass on their right. Then another one, on another galleon. And another, this one on a dromond to their left. Regulus watched as more mage light spells to both their sides lit up on the front decks of nine other ships, before turning back to Trechtus. "I believe it's time."  
  
Trechtus nodded, his features hard and determined. The Altmer walked up ahead towards the ship's bow and cast his own mage light orb, brighter than the others, to signal that he was ready to begin. Admiral Regulus looked on silently, folding his arms over his chest. Everything seemed to have gone quiet in that moment, as if the world hushed to listen and watch what was about to transpire. Behind him, even the sailors had stopped halfway through singing their praises of Skyrim's lasses and their huge, Nordic breasts, to watch with intrigue as the mages began their ritual.

  
The High Elf used a spell to conjure a stand, and then reached into his robes with both hands and withdrew a colossal soul gem as big as an Orc's fist, glowing darkly with powerful energy. A low, rhythmic chanting reached Regulus' ear as Trechtus began to speak the words of the ritual spell in an ancient tongue. The Imperial knew nothing of the words Trechtus spoke, but he did know one thing: he could already feel the effects of the spell. A cold wind began to pick up, draining all warmth out of the tropical sea air in moments and leaving the hardy Admiral shivering and wishing he had a warm cloak with him.  
  
After a few more moments of chanting, the soul gem in Trechtus' hands began to glow bright and blue, coruscating with energy. He noticed as a bright beam shot out of the soul gem's sides, lancing into the distance to strike at the soul gems being held by the other battlemages on each ship as they performed the same ritual. The beams of light began to connect with each other until they lit up like a gigantic chain of arcane energy. When the final soul gems had been connected to the giant link, Trechtus set his soul gem on the stand and quickly fished out his gilded lockbox, before unlocking it with a quick spell to reveal the artifact it contained — a sigil stone.  
  
To this day, Admiral Regulus didn't know where or how the elf had gotten his hands on such a mighty artifact. Perhaps it was a relic from the Oblivion Crisis. He knew little about the things, except that they were immensely powerful objects of Daedric nature. This one looked like a polished orb of obsidian blackness, so dark that it drank in the light of Trechtus' light orb without throwing any of it back. A blood-red glow surrounded it, and if the Admiral concentrated, he fancied he could hear it  _humming_ with power.  
  
Trechtus began speaking again, using a harsh language that sent a shiver down Regulus' spine from hearing it, and he just knew that he was speaking in Daedric. The Admiral and every other sailor on the deck watched in awe as the sigil stone began floating out of its box and rising several feet into the air. A breeze that must've come from the very depths of the Void swept across the ocean, suddenly chilling Regulus to his very bones as the gale blew across the deck, as cold as the grave.

The Imperial was so preoccupied with the unsettling feeling that he didn't notice the dark clouds forming overhead and the thick, red fog rolling across the sea's surface a kilometer ahead of their fleet until he heard the sailors behind him gasping in awe and fear. His eyes widened in shock when he finally witnessed his friend's spell. It was like a scene out of Oblivion itself. Indeed, if the Deadlands of Mehrunes Dagon had an ocean, it undoubtedly would have been choked with fog like this.  
  
As Admiral Regulus watched the unholy arcane storm roil before him, he found himself clutching the amulet of Stendarr around his neck, hoping fervently that if there would be a price to pay for using Daedric power just to defeat the Dominion at sea, it would not be too great to pay.

 

...

  
  
**PACIFIC OCEAN** **  
**PELELIU, PALAU ISLANDS**  
**TASK FORCE 32**  
**0540 HOURS**  
**15 OF SEPTEMBER 1944****

  
All was quiet on the deck of the USS  _Mount McKinley_ as Andrew Mitchell scanned the southwestern beaches of the island that lay before him and the American fleet: Peleliu. 

The thirty year-old Lieutenant Commander studied the craters on the beach which were so deep that they exposed the bare, naked coral beneath the sand, and the vast swathes of splintered, ashen coconut groves that had been laid to waste from end to end of this side of the island by high explosives. Task Force 32 had been subjecting this tiny, 6-square-mile island to constant bombardment for the past two days, and they still had  _plenty_ of ammo to spare for their pre-invasion bombardment, which would take place in a few minutes. When dawn broke, it would be heralded by Peleliu's immolation as they engulfed it in a firestorm of coordinated preparation fire, only a couple of hours before the 1st Marine Division of the III Amphibious Corps finally landed.  
  
"Those Japs aren't gonna know what hit them, eh?" asked the man standing next to him: Major General William Rupertus. “We’ll have captured this miserable little island within four days.”

“If you say so, sir,” Andrew replied noncommittally, still scanning the coral ridges.

“What’s the matter, Mitchell? Don’t you trust in our ability to win this?” Rupertus asked, arching a brow at him.

Andrew lowered his binoculars and turned towards the man, saying, “I know we can win this. Definitely. But the Japs are crafty, and they don’t go down easy.”

“I know that,” replied the USMC commander, giving him an easy smile. “But even the craftiest of foxes can’t do much when he finds a sixteen-inch shell exploding in his foxhole. We’ll take this island with minimal casualties.”

Andrew just nodded, thinking back to the last two days of constant bombardment. “Probably,” he conceded. “I doubt there’s many enemies holding this place, after the pounding we’ve given them…”

He might have continued speaking, had it not been for the tingling sensation that suddenly swept throughout his entire body. Andrew shivered involuntarily, feeling the hairs on the back of his neck rise. By the sudden jerk and stiffness of Rupertus, it was clear that he wasn’t the only one who felt it. The two men looked at each other, but before either of them could speak they heard shouts coming from the Marines on the deck of their ship. Andrew and Rupertus looked off to the side, staring out at the sea behind them in awe, where there seemed to be a storm approaching them. If the frightening speed at which the skies darkened and the clouds began to roil wasn’t enough to unsettle the men, then the distinctly unnatural  _red_ fog that followed it did the trick.

 _“Red fog? What the hell?”_  was all that Andrew could utter as his eyes took in the madness of the scene before him. He looked at Rupertus. The USCM commander had an astonished, wide-eyed look about him as he stared at the rapidly approaching fog.

“I don’t like this,” Rupertus muttered suddenly, stepping away from the gunwale. The man quickly turned towards a nearby sailor and barked at him, “Get to the bridge, now! We need to take evasive action against the fog! It might be a Japanese chemical attack! Everyone else, get below decks!”

While the sailor turned and ran for the helm and Rupertus continued shouting at the Marines around him to get to safety, Andrew found himself glued to his spot at the gunwale. The red fog was approaching too quickly; he knew there was no way they were going to be able to move out of the way before whatever it was reached them.  _What could it possibly be? Is this really a chemical attack of some sort? Could the Japanese really be behind this?_

Looking up at the black clouds just overhead, looking like the onset of a terrible squall, Andrew would have laughed at his train of thought were he not so terrified of the distinctly unnatural fog that was just now beginning to roll over their entire battle group. It looked awfully close to something right out of a Lovecraftian horror story.

 _I must be crazy. The war must’ve gotten to my head,_  he thought, finally making for below decks, even as the USS  _Mount McKinley_  was enveloped in the hellish red fog. He caught the last glimpse of the darkened heavens above, which had been clear just moments earlier, before his vision was consumed with murky redness.  _There’s no way that the Japanese could control the very weather itself. Only God can do that._

 

…

 

“Something’s wrong.” 

Admiral Regulus jumped when Trechtus spoke suddenly. The Battlemage’s eyes snapped open, and the sigil stone shattered in midair when his concentration broke. Trechtus didn’t seem to even care that the fragments of his precious artifact were now falling into the ocean as he ran over to the nearest gunwale and stared out into the water.

“Trechtus, what’s going on?” urged the Admiral as he came up beside him at the gunwales. “What’s happened?”

“I don’t know,” the battlemage admitted, “but I felt it. Something went wrong with the spell.”

“Meaning?” the Admiral pressed, staring out with concern at the red fog in the distance.

“Either the spell did absolutely nothing,” responded the Altmer, before trailing off. After a few seconds of staring at the roiling fog, he finished with, “Or it did something completely unintended.”

A blast of air hit them before either man could speak again. Admiral Regulus shut his eyes and shielded his face against it. Regulus froze, suddenly noticing something different. He took in a draft of air, scenting it. It smelled and felt like the tropics, warm and humid; but something was very  _wrong_ about it — clinging to it was the stink of smoke and ash, oil and bellows fire. It smelled like an entire realm bathed in flame and built of forged metal.

He saw figures in the fog, little more than murky shadows lurking behind the impenetrable screen — but even the fog could not conceal the sheer size of the things. Admiral Regulus and Lieutenant Volanare watched with mounting dread as those massive shapes became more defined figures amongst the swirling red sea. Lines sharpened, and details became clearer, until the front of the first figure parted the red veil, making way for the rest of the body.

When the entire figure finally came into clear view, Admiral Regulus’ brows slowly drew together in confusion and outrage. His mind balked, insulted by the sheer madness of the vision presented to him. For several long seconds he couldn’t quite process what he was seeing. 

“Admiral,” Trechtus croaked, watching as more of the massive vessels slowly exited the thick fog, “what are those?”

“Ships,” Regulus finally managed to say, finding it difficult to summon his voice. Some part of his mind registered those squat, iron-colored, blocky-looking vessels as ships, at least. There were six now that he could see: five larger ships, and a smaller one that stayed at their rear. Somehow, he instinctively knew they were vessels of war — every sharp line and abrupt angle of its figure radiated with malice and threatened violence.

“Are they… Dominion ships?” asked the paling Altmer.

These were not ships of the Dominion navy, Regulus thought; their hulls were not armored with malachite plating. Pillars of smoke rose from chimneys amidships, like the exhaust of a Dwemer automaton. He could see none of the Dominion navy’s infamous mini trebuchets, infamous for sinking Imperial ships by raining pure aetheric fire upon them, mounted anywhere on the decks. The masts he could see on the ships lacked any sail — which was not to say that he believed wind power alone could propel such massive vessels. By the Gods, each of the iron-plated hulks sitting out there in the water like weaponized islands must've been twice the length of the  _Leviathan_ , and twice again as heavy. The Dominion Navy never used ships like these…  _did they?_

Admiral Regulus brought up his spyglass to his eye and studied one of the ships. It was mostly bare of markings, save for those painted onto the side —  _CL-55 —_  but he could see a few banners flapping in the wind on its mast. The Admiral focused on the flags, but the colorful banners told him nothing. At least, not until he focused on a red one flapping on a taut line. When he saw the device emblazoned in the center, Regulus’ blood ran cold.

It was a bronze eagle, its wings splayed horizontally, perched atop a globe and what appeared to be an anchor, its arms and flukes in perspective. Only one nation in Tamriel used an eagle for its sigil: the Aldmeri Dominion.

“They have a banner bearing an eagle,” Admiral Regulus croaked, finding his hands shaking as he lowered the spyglass. He turned to his Lieutenant, who had gone slack-jawed in shock. “They must be Dominion ships. Your spell must have teleported them towards us, instead of  _away_.”

The pair of them stared out at the ships for several long, hard seconds, before the Admiral’s features hardened with determination. Marcus Atilius Regulus was not a meek man. He was a  _warrior,_  and if he were meant to fight an enemy with ships that dwarfed his largest galleon, then he would fight them — and if he died, he would die like a warrior of the Empire, defending it to the very end.

“Everyone to battle stations!” roared the Admiral, turning towards the sailors, feeling fire and vitriol begin coursing through his veins. “Send the order for all units of the fleet to attack! We have the enemy on our front porch, and now we are going to make them  _bleed!”_

 

…

 

“I can’t believe it,” Rupertus uttered, staring out from the  _Mount McKinley’s_ bridge with his binoculars. “Wooden sail ships? The Japs are using  _wooden ships_?”

“I don’t think they’re Japs, sir,” Andrew commented shakily, looking out at them. “This looks like something out of the Dark Ages. Or Roman, with the figureheads on some of them.”

 “What do you think, Jiggs?” Rupertus asked, turning towards the man standing next to him: Commanding General Roy “Jiggs” Geiger. His hair was white, and his skin was beginning to sag under his eyes, but the 58-year-old commander was as tough-faced as he’d ever been during his forty-plus years of military service.

“You’re right. These can’t be Japs,” murmured the General, evidently just as confused about everything as they were, but nonetheless remaining levelheaded as always. He brought the binoculars around his neck up to his eyes. “No, I know these bastards too well. Tojo would never stoop so low as to fight us at sea with…  _dinghies_ like these. They don’t even have guns! All I see are…”

His brow furrowed in confusion. “Are those… catapults? And ballistas?”

Andrew squinted out into the distance. Despite lacking his own pair of binoculars, he could see that these ancient-looking ships had weapons to match: catapult mechanisms and what looked like ballistae. He remembered reading about them back in his old officer training school days when he’d enlisted for the navy.

“Whoever these people are, they seem scared,” Geiger suddenly commented. “I see ‘em running around on their decks. We must’ve surprised them pretty badly with our sudden appearance.”

“They’re not the only ones feeling that way,” snorted Rupertus, albeit uneasily. He glanced out of the window again. “Where the hell is Peleliu? An island doesn’t just up and vanish like some—“

The explosion that rocked the deck of one of their light cruisers, the  _Cleveland_ , cut him off _._  All four men whipped their heads around, gaping at the sight of the fires now burning on the starboard side of the  _Cleveland’s_  bow.

 _“What the hell was that?”_  Rupertus shouted.

“I-I think that was… a  _fireball,_ sir,” Andrew responded, realizing just how insane the notion was as the words left his mouth.

The other men all glared at him, their brows furrowing deeply. Rupertus looked like he was about to reprimand him, but he didn’t get the chance to speak as the entire wooden fleet before them suddenly opened up with everything they had _._  

Fireballs, ballista bolts, catapult stones, and even  _lightning_  flew out from the decks of multiple wooden ships as they concentrated all their fire on the  _Cleveland_  and her fellow cruisers. The cruiser’s bridge windows were blown out by the concussion blasts, and several deck crew were blown sky-high by the explosions. Under the weight of the enemy fusillade, the  _Cleveland_ rocked slightly to port with a wounded groan.

“They’re firing at us!” Andrew exclaimed, shocked. He also noticed that the entire ancient armada was sailing towardsthem in what appeared to be the opening stages of a wide-reaching enveloping maneuver. The were doing it with an unnerving level of synchronization, too, for a force that probably didn’t even have a radio system to dispatch fleet-wide orders.

“Why would they? We haven’t done anything to them!” Rupertus exclaimed, looking as much furious as he did astonished now.

 “I don’t know, and I don’t care,” Geiger snarled vehemently. “We’re going to fight back. We’ll ask questions later.”

The General turned to the shocked radio operator on the bridge. “Operator, tell the Rear Admiral to make his cruisers open fire! Those sail ships are hostile!”

 

…

 

Rear Admiral Jesse Oldendorf had been standing on the bridge of the heavy cruiser  _Portland_  when he saw the  _Cleveland_ take a fireball.Still reeling from the utter shock of the enemy fleet’s audacious — and unexpected — attack, he failed to give the order to fire back before a fireball exploded against his flagship’s hull. The explosion shattered the bridge window and threw him to the ground. He felt blood drops crawling down his face while he recovered on the floor, but a cursory examination once he’d regained his wits revealed that he’d escaped with little more than a few small scratches from glass shards, as had the rest of the bridge crew.

But the barrage didn’t stop. The enemy’s thunderous salvo of projectiles hammered against the  _Portland’s_ hull like raindrops in a Pacific squall, with enough force to slightly rock the heavy cruiser — all 10,000 tons of her.

Oldendorf had had enough. The moment he regained his footing, the Rear Admiral shakily shouted at the radio operator, “What are you waiting for?! Tell the gun crews to open fire!”

Once the operator had scrambled back into his seat in spite of the cruiser’s ominous rocking, Oldendorf’s order was repeated to the crews manning the  _Portland’s_ gun batteries. Crew rushed to battle stations, shells were loaded, and guns were aimed. Moments later, the cruiser opened up with everything she had.

First came her main batteries, 8-inch cannons roaring as each gun mount sent three, 260-pound high explosive shells downrange. An eruption of dirty orange blossoms tore apart three enemy ships within the same heartbeat. The 5-inch secondary gun batteries followed, belching flame and smoke from their barrels as they ripped into the closest wooden ships firing at them. A moment later, the industrial jackhammering of .50 cal machine guns joined them once their crews had managed to depress the gun barrels enough to train them on the enemy ships. Bright lines of tracer fire lit up the seas as the bullets speared into the wooden hulls of their foes and set them aflame, or raked across exposed wooden decks and ground enemy crew into little more than red mist.

Oldendorf watched with grim satisfaction as his five cruisers each began opening fire as well, until every one of them pulsed with flame from stem to stern, unleashing their entire batteries at the enemy fleet. Geysers erupted with each shot, and one by one the wooden ships were sunk under the massed firepower. Now calmer and taking less fire, the Rear Admiral spoke up. “Operator, tell the cruisers to get into a battle line, ASAP.”

“Aye, aye, sir.”

Moments later, Oldendorf felt the  _Portland_ ’s deck shift under his feet as it maneuvered with the other ships into a firing line at sea. He was unnerved to see fire and  _lightning_ shooting out from the ancient ships, but it was offset by the sight of them sinking as easily as wooden ships should, when hit with high explosive shells by cruisers in an organized battle line.

“These jumped-up wooden shoe boxes don’t stand a chance,” commented the Rear Admiral, glancing around at the faces of his bridge crew. A few smiles greeted him, both grim and uneasy, and the Admiral found his smile falter.  _We may be able to defeat these enemies, but that doesn’t explain who they are or why they attacked us._

Jesse Oldendorf shook his head, feeling every bit of his 57 years of age.  _First that red fog rolls in, then Peleliu’s gone, and it looks like it’s broad daylight instead of predawn… Nothing feels right. Something is very wrong._

The deafening roar of the  _Cleveland_  exploding derailed his train of thought.

 

…

 

“Keep firing! Give them everything you’ve got!” Admiral Regulus shouted to the Imperial Battlemages on the deck firing at the enemy ships. His voice was nearly drowned by the deep, flat  _whump_ of the  _Leviathan’s_  naval trebuchet unleashing a 300-pound stone at the closest of the enemy warships.

The massive stone descended along its parabolic arc until it landed amidships of its target’s hull, only for it to shatter and bounce off the smooth metal armor. In return, the ship fired back. An impossibly deep and loud  _boom_ echoed out across the ocean surface, accompanied by a belch of flame from one of the squat, turret-like metal projections at the front of the closest ship. Admiral Regulus fancied he could see the glint of metal projectiles in flight moments before a massive explosion blew one of his ships apart in a shower of wooden shards.

Regulus growled his frustration as he watched the remains of the obliterated galleass fall into the water like flaming confetti at a New Life festival. Not only were these ships shrugging off his navy’s combined fire, but also they were destroying each of his ships with a single, devastating blow!

“Powerful sorcery must be at work,” the Imperial muttered. “They’re cutting through our ships like a scythe through wheat! Trechtus, if you have any suggestions, I’m open to hearing them.”

The Imperial turned towards the Altmer, who was staring at the scene of unparalleled destruction with an intense, thunderous scowl. Admiral Regulus’ eyebrows rose, seeing the deep furrow of the mer’s brows, the snarling curl of his lips, and the tightness of his clenched jaws. The look of sheer incandescent rage on the elf’s face was the likes of which the Admiral had never seen in all his years of knowing him.

“I’m responsible for all this,” the elf growled, his hazel eyes burning like live coals. An ardent, orange flame began glowing in his hands. As the Altmer spoke, it grew larger and hotter, up to the point that it was so hot it glowed  _white_ like the sun itself, aptly matching the battlemage’s rising temper. “It was  _my_ spell that brought them here, so it is  _my_ fault that our men are dying like this — but I’ll be damned if I’ll let it be said that Trechtus Volanare did  _nothing_ to avenge them!”

Trechtus released a final, infuriated cry as he flung the overcharged arcane projectile at the enemy warship. Burning hotter than any natural flame possibly could, the fireball unerringly shot across the distance between it and its target in the span of a second before slamming into the flat side armor of the warship, towards the front of the hull. It melted through several inches of solid steel before it found the ammunition stores for the ship’s cannons.

The 12,000 ton warship shuddered as its high explosive shells detonated from the inside. A massive conflagration engulfed most of its length, and the resulting blast boomed out across the surface of the water, sending red-hot metal shrapnel shooting through the air with the screech of tortured metal.

Trechtus gave a gasp and staggered forward onto the gunwale, panting heavily. Admiral Regulus was too busy staring in awe at the destroyed warship to immediately respond, but once he’d regained his wits he rushed over to his friend’s side. “Trechtus! Are you all right?”

The Altmer was nearly bent double and panting heavily, his features flushed deep red from his exertions. “That fireball… took a lot out of me…”

Regulus stared back at the ship, whose burning, charred wreck was slowly sinking into the sea. “You killed it. If you can do it, then it proves that these things  _aren’t_ indomitable!”

“But they’re still powerful…” Trechtus grunted as he tried to regain his footing. He eventually managed to stand upright again, in spite of the  _Leviathan’s_ rocking. The entire sea was churning and foaming from the violence of so many ships locked in brutal, deadly contest; it was as if they were fighting inside a typhoon. Trechtus opened his mouth as if to speak again, but the words seemed to die in his throat as his eyes flew wide open and his jaw quivered. The Battlemage pointed a trembling finger at the distant fog and croaked, “Admiral… the enemy has reinforcements.”

Admiral Regulus whipped around in time to see  _more_ of those strange ships appearing from out of the red fog, which had yet to dissipate. Only the three largest ones seemed to have any considerable armament. Shortly after they’d exited the fog, their weapons came to life, belching flame and smoke. Geysers of seawater and foam erupted all around his fleet moments later.

Trechtus turned towards the Admiral again. “What do we do now?”

Admiral Regulus stared in shock for a few more moments, before allowing a cold, hard look of determination to crossed his features. “Get to the communications mage, and tell him to command all Marine Battlemages on our dromonds to engage cloaking spells, and try to close in for boarding operations. Galleasses and galleons continue raining fire to draw enemy attention. If we can’t beat them in ship-to-ship, we’ll beat them in close quarters.”

 

… 

 

The men in the  _Mount McKinley’s_ helm watched in silent awe at the scorched wreck of the  _Cleveland_. For a long while, none of the men could seem to find their voice, even as they exchanged looks of utter shock and awe. The fact that a fleet of  _ancient_ shipshad just sunk one of their own was too much to digest, it seemed.

Andrew finally regained enough of his wits to speak, but his voice came out stuttering. “W-we just lost the  _Cleveland…_ ”

“How did they manage to blow up a modern warship?” Rupertus demanded, red-faced and infuriated. Andrew half expected to see steam coming out from the man’s ears.

“Looked like a… ammo rack explosion,” commented Geiger, his tone absent and his eyes still wide. “Maybe all the explosions heated up the ship enough to cause its shells to cook off?”

Before the men could respond, they heard the nearby radio operator speak up. “General, I’m picking up a transmission from battleship  _Mississippi._ ”

Geiger rushed over to the radio and picked up the receiver. “This is Geiger, I read you loud and clear,  _Mississippi._  Where have you been?”

 _“Navigating the red fog, sir,”_  came the communications officer’s reply. “ _We could see absolutely nothing for several minutes, but we’re exiting the fog now.”_

“It’s about time,” Geiger muttered. “Listen to me: we have engaged an enemy fleet. The  _Cleveland’s_ been sunk _._  Do you know the status of the other battleships?”

 _“I can only confirm that the Pennsylvania and the Maryland have been accounted for,”_  came the operator’s reply.

“Any word from the carriers?" 

“ _No, sir.”_

“Alright, then. Exit the fog immediately, and then contribute your fire into the battle. You will be firing upon wooden sail ships. I repeat — you will be firing upon wooden ships. Do not hesitate to shoot. Understood?”

There was a lengthy pause at the other end of the line.

“ _Understood, General,”_  came the operator’s voice. “ _Mississippi out.”_

Geiger hung up the receiver and turned to the others. “Our battleships are with us, and they should be entering the fight soon. Haven’t heard anything about our carriers, or from them. Not yet, anyways.”

At last, the battleships finally emerged from the fog a few hundred meters to their port side. The booming thunder of heavy guns reached them as the battleships sent a volley of sixteen- and fourteen-inch shells at the ancient ships, sending water and ship parts flying. Their AA guns and secondary batteries opened up shortly after, sending bright streams of cannon fire in a hailstorm towards the enemy, ripping apart sails and masts or setting wooden hulls alight with incendiary rounds.

“We won’t really need them,” Rupertus commented as he looked out at the battleships engaging the enemy fleet. “They’re being torn to shreds. At this rate, we’ll have wiped out their entire force in less than half an ho—“

The USMC commander suddenly gave a backwards jolt, staggering away from the window with a gasp. “ _What in the hell?”_  Rupertus uttered, staring intensely out at the water for a few more moments before his head whipped towards the others. “Did you all see that? Am I going crazy, or did half of those enemy ships just…” 

He gesticulated hopelessly with his hands, groping for words for a moment before finally sputtering,  _“Disappear?”_

General Geiger’s scowl couldn’t have been deeper. Slowly, the man nodded in agreement. “If you’re crazy, then I must be crazy, because I saw it happen too.”

“So did I,” Andrew remarked, his brows furrowed in confusion. “Could it have been some fancy trick of the light or something? I once saw a magician perform a disappearing act too, maybe what we saw was nothing more than smoke and mirrors too?”

“Smoke and mirrors? Really, Mitchell?” Rupertus grunted. “Smoke and mirrors can’t make half of an entire  _fleet_ turn invisible.”

Andrew finally peeled himself away from the window long enough to look each of the men in the eye in turn. “Sirs… exactly  _what_ force are we fighting? They use outdated ships and ancient weapons, yet they’ve just managed to make half of their ships vanish from sight...”

Nobody seemed to have an answer for him. At length, Rupertus frowned, and said, “I don’t like this whole situation. Geiger, I think you should tell the fleet to be wary for…”

“Invisible ships?” General Geiger asked dryly, his lips quirking up with wry humor. He sobered up instantly. “You’re right. If they can sink a ship like the  _Cleveland,_  then sailboat or no, they’re probably a threat to our other ships too.”

Geiger went over to the nearby radio and picked up the receiver. He first contacted the  _Portland._  “ _Portland,_  this is General Geiger, over.”

The operator picked up immediately. “ _This is Portland, over.”_

“ _Portland,_ let the Rear Admiral know that a large number of the enemy ships have managed to pull some sort of disappearing act on us. They just vanished; we can’t see ‘em. Be wary of a surprise attack.”

There was a pause at the end of the line. “ _General, can I confirm that you’ve just told us to beware of attack by invisible—“_

“Yes, invisible ships,” Geiger confirmed. “Don’t argue with me about it, just make sure you keep an eye out for them. They did sink the  _Cleveland_ after all.”

A massive, leviathan groaning from the other side of the line cut off any possible response from the operator. Geiger’s eyebrows drew together in a scowl.  “ _Portland?_  What’s going on, what was that noise?”

There was a lengthy pause from the operator, allowing Geiger to catch bits of shouts and cries of alarm from the other side, nearly drowned by the sound of Klaxons blaring. At last, the operator’s voice returned, more frantic than before. “ _Portland has boarders, sir. I repeat: the enemy is boarding us. They came out of nowhere!”_

 

…

 

Imperial Marine Gregory Beaufort would never get used to the experience of his entire ship being enveloped in a wide-reaching cloaking spell. The Breton found it difficult to maintain his balance with the deck continuously shifting beneath his feet and his comrades pressed close together around him. More than once he found himself needing to regain his footing and adjust his helmet as the dromond carrying him and his fellow Imperial Marines swerved to one side while heading directly towards the closest of the enemy’s steel ships. They were just under a hundred meters away from their target now, and they’d yet to be blown out of the water. Did their foes not have any Detect Life spells to warn them?

“Get ready, troops! Boarding operations will commence soon!” roared the commander of the regiment on the ship: a massive Breton named Montagne. He couldn’t see him from the invisibility spell, but he could imagine the surly man standing a few meters ahead of him at the front of the regiment, clad in his heavy plate armor, a thunderous scowl on his weathered face.

Gregory pushed the thoughts out of his head and focused on being ready to get into the action. He was so afraid of getting blown out of the water without warning by one of those devastating weapons mounted on the enemy ships, but he couldn’t even look around to assure himself that he wasn’t the only one that felt that way —his comrades were all invisible around him. 

“You all right, Gregory?” a calm voice beside him asked, just loud enough to be audible over the sounds of armed conflict.

“I’m all right, Julius,” the Breton replied, nodding, despite the fact that the Imperial couldn’t see him do it. He’d nearly forgotten that he was there with him, as were the rest of his usual circle of friends.

“You’d better be,” warned another voice to his side. Gregory recognized it as that of James. “It’s much too late to be backing down now.”

Another voice spoke up next: John. “Not like we’d be given a choice. If we tried to run, the enemy would pick us off. We’d be dead before we made it a hundred meters.”

“Running is out of the question,” James replied sharply. “Imperial Marines  _never_  run from a foe. Especially when the enemy they’re fighting has killed so many of their comrades.”

“No, they don’t,” agreed Julius, his tone hardening. “We would be failing our fellow Marines if we ran away and denied them their rightful vengeance. No, we’re not going to let that happen. We’re going to make our enemy pay.”

The disembodied voice of their commander roared at them again. “Stand ready, Marines! Brace yourselves for boarding _!”_

Gregory looked ahead, where the prow of their dromond was coming within ten meters of the enemy ship’s frontal deck. He shut his eyes and braced himself for impact, hearing Montagne roaring once more. “ _Steel thyselves, men!”_

There was a thundering crash, and Gregory felt the mother of all kicks rock their ship as it rammed into the side of the enemy’s frontal hull. The impact was powerful enough to throw several unsteady Marines to the deck. Meanwhile, the enemy ship didn’t so much as rock on its axis — it was as if they had just rammed a mountainside. He heard several similar impacts in the distance as more invisible dromonds smashed into the side of the ship from port and starboard.

Moments after impact, the invisibility cloak on their ship was dispelled, and Gregory could suddenly see everything around him. He had no time to study anything before a sudden ripple of magic swept throughout the ranks, as one of their battlemages cast featherweight spells on them. Montagne, standing at the head of the regiment, pointed his broadsword at the front deck of the enemy ship. “Imperial Marines!  _Attack!”_

His Marines answered him with their own war screams as they surged forth onto the deck on the enemy ship like floodwater bursting through a dam. Several Battlemages stayed back on the ship to unleash arcane fury upon the figures of the enemy crew manning the strange metal ballistae situated on the amidships deckhouses. After steeling himself, Gregory leapt onto the enemy deck with the aid of his featherweight spell, shouting, “ _For honor! For the Empire!”_

The moment the Breton’s armored boots hit the deck he set off running towards the closest non-Imperial Marine. Seeing his chosen foe’s surprised, unprepared stance, Gregory shot forward, slashing at the junction of his head and neck. He barely felt the impact as his sword’s honed steel edge decapitated his foe, leaving a stump of ragged muscle and bone splinters with twin fountains of blood spurting where his neck used to be.

Before the spurting corpse had even fallen, Gregory had already selected who would die next, and raced towards them. Tuning out all unnecessary sensations bombarding him from all sides, the Breton cut his opponents down without seeing their faces or hearing their screams, only knowing the feeling of his blade’s impact against flesh and bone and the report of his shield as he smashed it into faces. But he wasn’t deaf to his surroundings. He heard the enemy ships firing their weapons with a roar like a mountain cracking open; the encouraging shouts of his commanding officer; the metallic  _crunch_ as an Orc Marine with an axe smashed an enemy’s skull into the deck with enough force to dent the metal.

As he fought, Gregory was also able to recognize his friends nearby by their distinctive combat styles; the powerful sword-and-shield strikes of Julius; the brutally efficient sword-and-dagger cuts from John; the fluid and graceful slashes from James’ whirling longsword. Knowing they were nearby filled him with confidence as he engaged in his own butchery with sword and shield.

Then it was all suddenly over, and Gregory found himself standing alone on the deck, slickened with blood, offal, and bone splinters, panting from his exertions. Shaking his head lightly to clear it, the Breton looked around and saw that the Imperial Marines were charging below decks to finish off the remaining enemy crew. Still panting, the man’s gaze drifted downward, and he ended up catching sight of one of the corpses he’d made. He stared at it for several seconds, before his eyebrows shot up in shock.

It was a  _human_ body, not a High Elf. Gregory would go so far as to say the man he’d killed even looked somewhat like an ethnic Imperial. He didn’t wear any armor whatsoever, but instead a sort of drab gray-green combat dress that looked unlike anything Gregory had seen. There was no way it could protect its user against any physical blow, any more than his linen nightclothes could. Were these people not melee combatants, but strictly ship operators?

“Gregory!”

The Breton looked up to see his friends approaching. When he came near, John asked, “Are you well? Any injuries?”

“I’m fine,” Gregory replied, nodding. He looked down at the body again. “Have you noticed who we’re fighting?”

They all nodded grimly. “They’re not elves,” Julius remarked with a troubled look in his icy blue eyes, scratching his black beard, “but they’re definitely not Imperial Navy. I’ve never seen uniforms like theirs.”

James spoke up next, looking thoroughly spooked. “And their long weapons… they must be enchanted. I saw Jorgen’s head burst apart like a melon when one pointed at him! Whatever it was, it punched right through his shield and left a hole through his helmet!”

Several long seconds of silence followed that remark. Eventually, John spoke up. “I don’t like this — any of this. I was told we were going to be fighting the Dominion Navy. Now we’re battling strange ships being manned by  _human_ soldiers with enchanted weapons? Who exactly are these people?" 

“I don’t think anybody knows the answer to that,” Gregory admitted, “but we know one thing: they’re our enemy, because  _we_ fired upon them first. No backing out of this fight now. We either win this and find out after the battle, or…”

He trailed off, knowing he didn’t need to finish that sentence. Not that defeat was an option for Imperial Marines. Gregory looked at the human body once more. “Think maybe someone should report this? The Admiral might want to know that these aren’t Altmer.”

“I’ll tell the communications mage on the ship,” James volunteered, before turning and running off.

Gregory watched him go, before turning to the others. “Let’s get going, then. There’s still a fight that needs to be finished below decks, human foes or no.”

 

…

 

“ _Move, Marines! We have boarders on the ship! Get locked and loaded and get your asses out there!”_  came the bellow of Captain George Hunt as the attack transport USS  _Ormsby’s_ complement of Marines bustled into the armory to gear up and fight their attackers.

“Looks like Tojo’s decided to fight back after all,” Private Nicholas Miller grunted as he patted down his combat uniform, making sure he had all the equipment he’d managed to grab before he and the Marines had been rushed to the armory. Satisfied, he hefted his BAR and switched it to semi-automatic mode, taking comfort in the familiar weight of it in his hands. “So much for  _little resistance_ on Peleliu _._ ”

The Marine he addressed beside him, a member of his usual fire team, had light brown hair and still wore his favorite cap, having forgotten to grab a helmet in the excitement. On his combat uniform he wore a patch that read,  _Pvt. Kilgour._

“I’ll say,” Connor replied, chambering a round in his Thompson as he joined Nick in exiting the bustling armory. “They said we’d barely have to fire a shot, and now we’re fighting off boarders on our own ship. The Japs gotta have serious guts to try and board us. I doubt a US Navy commander has ever even had to give the order to repel boarders since the War of 1812… Say, should we wait for Mark?”

“I’m right here,” said another Marine as he jogged up towards them, patting his helmet on his head. An M1 Garand was clutched in his hand, with a bayonet attached. He was the tallest of the three, and the patch on his combat uniform read  _Pvt. Roylance._  With a mock-serious tone he asked, “You two weren’t actually thinking about leaving me behind, were you?”

“Wouldn’t dream about it,” Nick assured him. “Come on, let’s go show Tojo not to mess with Marine Raiders.”

The fire team rushed down the hall a few yards behind another pair of Marines ahead of them. They looked side to side down each hallway they passed, but they didn’t spot any enemy boarders, just fleeing seamen and other crew. All three of them turned off the safeties on their weapons as they approached a corner at the end of the hall, where screams of combat echoed.

There was a metallic rattling of a Tommy gun up ahead, before the Marine wielding it came into view from around the corner, walking backwards. After another moment of wild firing, the Marine’s weapon clicked empty. Before he could reload, a sword was thrust into the man’s chest with enough force to staple him against the wall.

Nick scowled both in anger and in confusion at the man who held the blade as he tore it out. The fact that he was wearing armor wasn’t the part that confused him most; he wasn’t a history buff like Connor, but he just knew that the armor the man wore was certainly not Japanese — it had a Roman feel to it. The sword he clutched was certainly not a katana, either, but a medieval-looking one instead.

When the Roman — Nick lacked any other way to call him — took notice of them, his eyes narrowed. Two of his fellows, similarly armored, joined him at the corner, and their appearance prompted the first one to charge forth with a savage battle scream. His comrades surged forward just behind him, echoing his cries.

All three Marines snapped out of their trance and opened fire, backtracking as they did so. Nick and Mark leveled their rifles and fired at their upraised kite-shaped shields, while Connor fired a short, accurate burst at another with his Tommy gun. The rounds tore through the antiquated armor with ease, killing two of the wannabe Caesars instantly. Undaunted, the final soldier leapt over the bodies, slashing at Nick, shouting.  _“FOR THE EMPIRE!”_

Mark darted forth to interpose himself between them. The Marine Raider raised his rifle to block, and then brought the stock around and smashed it into his foe’s crested helm, making him stagger a few steps. He recovered quickly, and the two of them squared off briefly. Mark held his rifle like a spear, bouncing on the balls of his feet as if he were in a boxing match, while his foe simply held his guard with sword and shield. Finally, the Roman sneered at his unarmored foe and darted forward with a cut.

But what the man didn’t know was that Mark had already survived three different katana-charges from Japanese soldiers on three different occasions, by killing them. His underestimation would cost him his life.

Mark expertly moved into the sword strike, using his rifle to redirect the blow and move outside of his opponent’s guard. Before his foe could turn around, the Marine rammed him with his shoulder to throw him off balance, grabbed his rifle like a spear and then raised it for an overhead thrust with his bayonet, aimed at the swordsman’s throat. The Roman jerked when the 16-inch blade punched through his windpipe and scraped against his spine. Blood dripped down the bayonet, and when Mark tore it out, the swordsman toppled like a felled tree, gargling.

“What in the world?” Connor breathed when the body had twitched its last. He seemed to forget about the battle happening in their ship and kneeled before the corpse. “This is actual steel armor… Nobody in their right mind would use this in real combat. It’s too heavy, and bullets can pierce it easily.”

“I doubt these guys  _are_ in their right minds,” Nick commented, studying the armor as well. “What would a bunch of Julius Caesar wannabes be doing out in the middle of the Pacific?”

“I dunno.” Connor began rifling through the dead man’s pockets. “This guy doesn’t have any modern combat gear either. Look at this,” he said, pulling out each item as he listed it. “Whetstones… flint and steel… a water skin… eh? What’s this?”

The man pulled out what looked like a small vial filled with red liquid. Mark squinted at it. “Well, I know one thing: it ain’t no Coke.”

Connor squinted at the face of the bottle. “There’s a label here, but I can’t understand what it says. It looks Latin, but… it isn’t.”

“Really? But the guy earlier shouted something in English.  _‘For the Empire.’_  What’s the point in using different languages for script and speech?”

Any possible response he might’ve had was severed when they heard heavy metal boots stomp around the corner. All three Marines turned as one, weapons raised, only to stare in shock and awe at the terrifying man in Romanesque armor that stood before them.

No. Whatever that beast was, it was not a man, even if it was shaped like one. It stood a whole head taller than the Marines, and it had huge muscles that bulged underneath its olive-green skin. A ponytail of silvery hair peeked out from behind its shoulder. The thing’s dark visage was contorted into a malevolent scowl, and it bore strong resemblance to a bulldog — if not in its broad, flat features, then in its jutting chin that revealed two sharp, ivory-white tusks.

It unleashed a savage, wordless roar and hefted a ridiculously oversized mace before charging at the Marines. If they hadn’t been so taken by shock, they might have screamed in terror. Instead, the three of them backtracked quickly and opened fire, prompting the beast to raise a solid steel shield in defense.

Connor’s Thompson rattled, Mark’s M1 rifle banged, and Nick’s BAR roared with a flat and deafening  _gunk-gunk-gunk_ as they poured all their fire into the thing’s upraised shield, but their bullets sparked and pinged off the advancing steel wall. It must’ve been at least three inches thick and weighed as much as a man, but the thing wielding it didn’t seem to feel its weight as it bulled forward, ignoring their bullet storm.

Mark’s rifle was first to run dry, with a metallic  _ping_ sound as the empty cartridge automatically ejected, and Connor’s submachine gun was next to click empty. Both men frantically reached for fresh magazines, but they’d never reload in time given the rate of closure between them and the monster. Knowing he was almost running dry too, Nick frantically contemplated his options, before he quickly realized that the beast had left its legs exposed during its charge. He lowered his BAR and took aim with the few bullets left in his magazine.

One shot. Two shots. Three. There! A spurt of blood, a roar of pain, and the big green brute toppled forward, dropping his huge mace with a metallic bang to clutch at the hole in his leg made by the .30-caliber round. Connor finally reloaded his Tommy gun and depressed the trigger, sending a one-man bullet swarm at the prone figure. By the time his weapon clicked empty again, Connor was shaking and looking paler than usual. His target looked like the victim of a Mafia drive-by, riddled with bloody, leaking holes all over.

The three Marines stood their ground and reloaded, staring at the green man with mixed expressions of fear, shock, and awe, before turning those same looks upon each other. They didn’t even try to maintain a veneer of confidence or fearlessness. Nobody seemed to know what to say for several long seconds.

“Jesus Christ,” Nick finally muttered, pulling off his helmet to wipe a hand over his sweaty forehead. He stared at the huge corpse before them, and asked, “What the hell is that thing?”

Connor was the one who shakily answered him. “If I had to say… it looks like an Orc.”

Nick gave him a blank look. “A what?”

“An Orc?” Mark asked, incredulous. “Like, a J.R.R. Tolkien,  _Middle Earth_ Orc?”

Connor gave him an abashed nod. “W-well, yeah! I mean… just look at it! Tusks, green skin, ugly mug only a mother could love… though I’d think that this guy here could’ve wiped the floor with any of Tolkien’s Orcs.”

Nick just glared at the other two Marines. Unlike them, he had never read J.R.R. Tolkien’s  _The Hobbit_. He’d been too caught up trying to sustain himself during the Depression when it had come out in 1937. Evidently, they hadn’t. “I came here to shoot a couple of Nips threatening our American way of life, not…  _fantasy creatures,_ ” he said with a curl of his lip.

“Well whoever these people are, they’re definitely not Japanese,” Connor concluded with a wary look at the…  _Orc._

“Yeah. I figured,” Mark remarked dryly, sparing the body another look. “So then why are we fighting them? What are these Roman-looking soldiers and…  _Orcs…_  doing in the middle of the Pacific?”

An uncomfortable pause stretched out between them. They stared at the body, then at each other, then at the body again.

“I don’t think we’re in the Pacific anymore,” Nick whispered, barely audible.

The other two Marines glared at him accusingly, as if angry that he’d spoken the thought that they had been too afraid to acknowledge themselves. Their looks softened with concern after a few seconds, though. It was hard to avoid thinking about the possibility, especially with a non-human corpse lying just a few yards away. The sounds of bloody contest continued lurking in the background, the echoing bangs of rifles and tommy guns mixing with battle screams and the clashing of steel.

At last, Nick replaced his helmet and secured his chinstrap. “We can worry about this later. We’ve got to take care of the boarders on our ship.”

The other Marine Raiders nodded their agreement, and they moved out without another word.

 

…

 

Admiral Regulus flinched when he felt the enemy projectile scream past the deck of the  _Leviathan_ to splash into the sea a few hundred meters astern. Under an hour ago he’d been in the center of his fleet, but now his ship was quickly becoming part of the front lines as the enemy fleet rolled over his forces, and now they were beginning to take hits in earnest. The arcane shielding on the  _Leviathan’s_ hull had already stopped a few of their smaller, bright, fiery projectiles and some high velocity shrapnel, but when the enemy ships finally decided to focus fire on his galleon, the Admiral had little doubt that the  _Leviathan_ would be crushed under the iron-shod heel of this implacable juggernaut they faced.

“We’ve nearly lost half our ships,” Trechtus growled, casting a powerful bolt of lightning at an enemy ship. The Battlemage swore that they did more damage to these ships than the fireballs, and true to his word, he saw molten metal where his projectile had struck.

“But despite it all, we’re hurting them,” Admiral Regulus commented. Though the words were meant to be encouraging, they sounded hollow in his ears. “The ships that have been boarded are no longer firing at us. Probably being butchered as we speak. If our Imperial Marines can neutralize the crew on the ships they’d boarded, those who remain might be able to force another boarding and do the same.”

He turned to Trechtus then, and asked, “Don’t you know any spells to transmute iron? Perhaps they won’t be able to float if suddenly their ships turned into silver or gold beneath their feet.”

Trechtus paused from preparing another lightning bolt to shake his head. “Tried that. Didn’t work. The metal in their hulls must be heavily alloyed, and the spell I know only works on unalloyed mineral ore.”

Admiral Regulus merely grunted in response. He was heavily tempted to ask Trechtus if he could muster enough magicka for another fireball to kill another ship, but the Altmer looked to be on the verge of collapse from all the mental strain of continuous spell casting. Casting another spell like that might very well kill him.

An ensign ran out from below decks and halted before Regulus, saluting hastily. “Admiral! I have news from our boarding parties!” the lad exclaimed. “This enemy we’re fighting — they’re not the Dominion Navy! Our Marines report that the people manning the enemy’s ships are all  _human!”_

Admiral Regulus and Trechtus both gaped at the ensign. “Humans?” Trechtus sputtered. “Preposterous! There’s no human navy in these seas that uses ships like these!”

The Admiral scowled, and then turned towards the Altmer. “Remember about the spell you used, Trechtus. You claimed that it would link Nirn to another dimension. Perhaps instead of bringing the Dominion fleet towards us… you brought  _another_ fleet into Nirn instead. One from  _another_ dimension.”

Trechtus seemed to weigh the Admiral’s words for a moment. As realization dawned, the Battlemage’s eyes widened in shock. “By the Gods… I think you may be right, Admiral.”

Regulus stared back out at this losing battle they were fighting. They were taking so many losses, all for an enemy they never had quarrel with.  _I ordered the attack on their ships. I’m the sole man responsible for the deaths of countless Imperial Navy sailors…_

He shook away the guilt pangs that threatened to consume him. No time for that now, he had to make new plans for a full-out retreat. With the aid of invisibility spells and smokescreens, they’d be able to withdraw their Marines and run. If they were lucky, the enemy wouldn’t pursue them and let them run. If not… with a stiff wind in her sails, the  _Leviathan_ could pull about 13 knots. From what he’d seen of this battle, the enemy ships could probably do twice that. But even if the  _Leviathan_ was taken out, perhaps at least one of their ships might be able to slip away unnoticed…

Admiral Regulus was still contemplating his options when a distant buzzing reached him. He might not have noticed it at all had the sound not grown louder and louder, accompanied by a high, whining whistle that slowly grew with intensity, until it was painfully difficult to ignore. Both he and Trechtus looked around worriedly for the origin of the sound, but they saw nothing in the water aside from flotsam and sea foam.

Frantic, alarmed shouts from the seamen behind them forced both men to turn around. They were gesticulating and shouting, looking more afraid than he’d have ever expected of the normally fearless men. Admiral Regulus followed the pointing finger of a sailor up into the sky, but he only saw the sun.  _What’s he pointing at? There’s nothing there…_

As he squinted into the harsh tropical sunlight, a group of dark, oddly shaped figures appeared in front of the sun, blocking its light. The Nordic brogue of one of his sailors suddenly rang loudly in his ears.

_“DRAGON!”_

Bright, snaking trails of fire erupted from the twinkling lights on the wings of the airborne figures. Out of instinct, Admiral Regulus threw himself to the deck, and Trechtus mimicked him. It might have been that instinct that saved their lives.

A deafening, staccato banging filled Admiral Regulus’ ears a heartbeat later, making him clamp his hands over them and shut his eyes with a grimace. He was still able to hear the crunch of his flagship’s deck splintering, the thundering  _crack_ of her masts snapping, the  _rip_ of her sails being shredded, and the agonized screams of his crew dying. Something warm splashed onto the Admiral’s helmet. It wasn’t seawater.

The buzzing roar and whistling shriek of the airborne foes seemed to pass just overhead, but still the Admiral did not stir. He lay there for several long seconds, perhaps even minutes, listening to the battle raging all around him at sea, before he felt safe enough to raise his head.

Everything was destroyed. Countless holes were ripped into the sails, the main mast had been felled like a tree, and the naval trebuchet was ablaze. Blood, offal, and bone shards littered the deck of the  _Leviathan_. Nobody else stood; aside from him and Trechtus, not a single deck crewmember remained. There were too few bodies to account for the number of crew that had been out here with him moments ago, as well. Regulus suspected that what was left of most of those men now probably lay in the blood-and-bone gruel that ran slick under his feet. The  _Leviathan_ could still sail with the men she had below decks, but in terms of combat, she was effectively disabled.

Admiral Regulus felt bile rise to the back of his throat as he shakily rose to his feet, but he fought the urge to vomit. Trechtus was not so successful. When he saw the charnel house the  _Leviathan’s_ deck had become, he turned to the gunwale and violently spewed his stomach’s contents over the side. Realizing that the buzzing roar still lingered in his ears, Admiral Regulus looked around for the source, and before long he finally got a good look at the figures that had taken the  _Leviathan_ out of the fight.

His first impression was that they were shaped for flight, with wings and a sort of tail like those of a bird, but the similarities ended there. They didn’t flap their paddle-like wings, yet they moved with a predatory grace and speed that reminded him of the falcons he’d seen back on mainland Tamriel. Whenever they dove upon his ships like birds of prey, bright whips of flame spewed from their wings and tore his ships apart from stem to stern, before rising again for altitude and repeating the process. The Admiral’s brows rose when he realized that they were _flying _war__   _machines_.

He had heard of airships used in Tamriel’s past, relying on Dwemer technologies and advanced magic to function, but they weren’t common at all. Some mages he knew considered Dwemer airships one of the pinnacles of magickal advances. If so, then what would they consider these flying machines which could soar like a raptor and strike like a bolt of lightning?

“We have to surrender,” Regulus said suddenly, in a voice so quiet that he barely recognized it as his own. He turned towards Trechtus, eyes wide in shock and, he was almost ashamed to admit,  _fear._  “There’s no way we can escape this foe with those things picking us off. They’re not Dominion — they might not kill us. If they have a shred of mercy in them, we might yet live past today. It’s either that, or we get picked off as we flee.”

Trechtus didn’t even bother maintaining a veneer of confidence anymore. Admiral Regulus could see the animal fear in his eyes, kept in check only by strict poise that had been cultivated by years of Battlemage training and discipline. At last, the Altmer nodded his agreement and cast a quick fortification spell on Admiral Regulus. While the elf ran to hoist a white flag of surrender —hoping that their foes would understand what it meant — Admiral Regulus walked to the prow of his ship and took in a deep breath, before shouting in a voice that had been amplified by magic.

“ _This is Admiral Marcus Atilius Regulus speaking! I declare surrender! Imperial Combined Fleet, stop fighting! Imperial Marines, lay down your arms! We have been bested today! I repeat: We surrender!”_

 

…

 

The bridge of the  _USS Mount McKinley_ was deathly silent. All the crewmembers were staring at each other in awed shock. Seeing everyone’s reactions only helped Andrew confirm that what had just happened, what they had all witnessed, wasn’t a figment of his imagination.

“ _English,”_  muttered Rupertus, rubbing his jaw absently, his gaze distant. “Who’d’ve thought… Who exactly are these people?”

“Whoever they are, their Admiral want to surrender,” commented Roy Geiger, eyes still wide from the startling revelation. “Looks like those F4U’s off the  _Petrof Bay_ and  _Hollandia_ were enough to finally break ‘em.”

A few seconds more of silence stretched out amongst them, interrupted by the deep thunder of cannon fire. It wasn’t enough to drown out the shouts coming from the ‘enemy’ Admiral. All eyes on the bridge were trained on the commanders of the Peleliu attack group, but Roy Geiger felt as if the weight of those gazes were all on him. Perhaps with reason — he was the Commanding General.

“Operator,” Geiger finally said, staring out at the shattered fleet before them, “command all ships to hold fire. No need to continue this massacre.”

“Aye, aye, sir.”

The radio operator gave out his command and echoed it fleet-wide. It took a minute or so, but eventually the fire coming from his ships tapered off slowly, until the last cannon’s fire echoed out into the open sea. Geiger looked out the bridge window and was relieved to see that even the enemy ships had stopped firing. Not that he was worried they would be sunk — he was just happy that this senseless slaughter of a fleet with wooden ships had finally ended.

They heard the voice of the enemy Admiral again. It sounded as if he were using the world’s clearest megaphone, his voice’s projection curiously lacking any sort of Doppler effect he’d grown used to hearing.  _“Thank you. My mage will send up a light orb above my flagship so you know where I am. You may board my vessel to discuss our conditions of surrender, or I can board yours.”_

Before anybody could ask about the strange terminology, the bridge crew gasped when a bright ball of light suddenly appeared over one of the largest of the wooden ships, where it then began floating in place.

The UNSC commander gave the floating ball of light a wary look. After all the madness he’d been witness to in less than an hour, this new revelation didn’t seem to faze him as much. “More damn magician’s tricks,” he muttered. The man turned to Roy Geiger. “Well? What do you think?”

The commanding General gave a pensive huff, looking over his enemy’s flagship. The wooden galleon had one of her three masts broken, and there were holes all over the sails that remained. “I think we should board their ship. Not like the Admiral’s is in much condition to do any sailing anyways. Besides, it’ll give me a better look at who exactly our  _enemies_ are.”

A few minutes later, Geiger, Rupertus, and several armed Marines were in a small boat, sailing through the choppy sea towards the enemy’s flagship. They had to weave through all the flotsam and debris from their battle. Geiger thought he saw a few figures flailing about in the water, and he could see the others on his boat looking at them with some concern and pity. Hopefully, they’d be able to get their negotiations with the enemy Admiral out of the way and rescue them in time. Their fleet might’ve attacked them, but he didn’t like leaving men to die like that.

When they reached the galleon, the sight of the warship suddenly struck the General. The ancient vessel reminded him strongly of the USS  _Constitution_ with its three masts and profile. Seeing it marred by the battle and full of holes made him unreasonably sad, despite knowing it was a supposedly hostile ship.

A rope ladder was thrown down the side of the gunwale. Geiger looked at it warily, but at length he got on and began climbing up the side, hoping that he didn’t look too clumsy while wrestling with the ladder — his age didn’t make things any easier. When he finally got topside, the General slowly looked around at the deck. A slight grimace threatened to break out; their fighter planes probably strafed these guys, and without any AA cover to speak of they’d been shredded. Very few crewmembers were present to greet him, and all of them were stained with blood that most likely once belonged to their fellows.

Upon finally seeing the enemy’s men, the General cocked an eyebrow. Most were clad in steel armor, and those who weren’t either went bare-chested or, in the case of one man, were garbed in long robes which Geiger  _swore_ he could see shimmer faintly. He was so intrigued by the strangely iridescent robes that he nearly didn’t notice the man who wore them — and when he finally noticed his face, Geiger did a double take.

The man was yellow. Not Asian-yellow, but  _actual yellow._

No, that wasn’t quite right, Geiger thought. He wasn’t so much yellow as a shade of gold. But damn if he didn’t still look freaky, like an alien out of Buck Rogers or something. He was just over a half head taller than anyone else on the deck, his unusually sharp features were contorted with a look that Geiger recognized as distasteful resignation, and he had pointed ears.

The freaky looking yellow-man stood next to a shorter, distinctly  _human_  man clad in ornate armor and a crested helmet: the supposed Admiral. Geiger thought he looked several years younger than him, but he was still far from old. Those dark brown eyes of his were subjecting him to a hard gaze full of experience, but Geiger thought he sensed some shame and guilt in it as well.

When the last American had climbed onto the deck of the enemy ship, a short silence stretched out between the two groups staring each other down. At last, the enemy Admiral removed his helmet to reveal salt-and-pepper hair, before standing ramrod straight and placing a fist to his breast in salute. Looking Geiger straight in the eyes he said, “I am Admiral Marcus Atilius Regulus of the Imperial Navy, and you stand upon my flagship,  _the Leviathan._ ”

A few murmurs ran throughout the group of Americans. After another pause and a wary look at the Admiral and his men, Geiger issued his reply. “Roy Geiger, Commanding General in the United States Navy, and commander of the Third Amphibious Corps,” he said, standing just a bit straighter.

The enemy Admiral’s brows furrowed. “Pardon me, but… what navy did you say you represent?”

“The United States of America,” Geiger repeated, also furrowing his brows. Something was off about the way the man was speaking, but he couldn’t put his finger on it.

Admiral Regulus stared blankly at the name’s mention, before shaking his head. “I apologize, but I have never heard of any place known as the  _United States of America,”_  he confessed. “You… aren’t allied to the Aldmeri Dominion, are you?”

Geiger thought he could see a few of Admiral’s deck hands bristle at that. The American shook his head. “No, I can’t say we are. We’ve never heard of them.”

The Admiral glanced over at his freakish friend, who suddenly cast his gaze down to the deck with a guilty look, before sighing. “It matters not. We’re here to discuss the terms of our surrender. Or did you come here so you can personally cut my throat and see me bleed?”

Geiger glared at the man. “We’re not here to kill you — though we have every right to. You attacked us first, without provocation.”

He’d hoped that by implying that they’d provoked them into attacking, he’d learn if such was the case. Instead, all he got was an ashamed look from the Admiral. “We thought you were our enemy when we saw your banner with the bronze eagle on it — the Aldmeri Dominion uses an eagle as its sigil bird as well.”

The American was about to open his mouth to reply again, but instead he found himself staring intensely at the Admiral. Seeing this, the Admiral cocked a brow at him. “Is something wrong, General?”

Geiger took an involuntary step back, and raised an accusing finger at the Admiral. “The words you’re saying! They’re… they don’t match up with the way your mouth is moving!”

Admiral Regulus stared intently at him for a few seconds, before bowing his head. “If that is the case… then I’m not the only one who sees it. You’re doing it, too. I suppose the Divines have decided to eliminate any language barrier between us.”

Geiger’s scowl only deepened at that. All the men on deck, both Americans and Imperials, broke out into shocked murmurs, staring at each other in shock and awe.

“That’s enough!” Rupertus shouted, stepping forth. “I demand answers, right now!  _Who_  are you people,  _where_ are we, and  _why_ is all this crazy shit happening?!”

Admiral Regulus leveled a withering at the man. “I may have surrendered to your forces, but I am still an Admiral of the Imperial Navy, and I will not be denied the respect due my rank.”

Rupertus fixed the Imperial Admiral with his own glare, but after a few moments he relented, and snapped out a quick, almost mocking salute. “Major General William Rupertus, United States Marine Corps,  _sir._ Now would you kindly answer the damn question?”

His voice tapered off into a taut, harsh whisper at the end. The Imperial Admiral seemed to bristle angrily for a moment, before deflating slightly. He looked around at the Americans for a moment before replying. “I don’t know who you people are, or where you come from, but I know this — you are no longer in the world you once knew.”

Admiral Regulus waited for a response, and when he received none, he continued. “You are on Nirn, southwest of the main continent known as Tamriel. Right now, we sail in the Abecean Sea, a few hundred nautical miles southeast of Stros M’kai — and you are here because we  _brought you here,_ by means of a powerful experimental spell _._ ”

The Americans took that in without visibly reacting. Geiger, for his part, simply stared at the Admiral as if he were a mad dog. But after a few more seconds, he couldn’t find the strength to keep it up. The General sighed and rubbed his temples with his hands. A bone-deep lassitude swept through him, and the tough American suddenly felt every one of his 58 years of age pressing down on him.

 _“I’m getting too old for this,”_  Geiger finally grunted. For some reason, he felt surprisingly open to the possibility that something like a  _magic spell_ had brought him and a number of his ships into another world entirely. After the events he’d witnessed in the past hour, perhaps this wasn’t the most insane thing he’d had happen. But it was still a bit too much for him to digest.

At last, the General looked back up at the Admiral. “This is… too much to take in right now,” the man confessed, looking around at the bloodstained deck. “Why don’t you lead us to the nearest safe anchorage so we can discuss this matter in a more proper space, back on land?”

The Admiral gave him a blank look. “But… what about the terms of surrender?”

“Consider that your terms of surrender,” Geiger replied sharply. “You lead our ships to the nearest port, and then you and I can discuss the circumstances around our… strange arrival.”

Geiger paused, before thoughtfully adding, “We’ll give you time to rescue any men overboard, and with your permission, I’ll have my men assist.”

The Admiral and his yellow friend exchanged a shocked glance at each other — probably surprised that they’d gotten off so lightly during their  _negotiations._  Admiral Regulus suddenly looked back at Geiger with a wary, distrustful look. Not surprising, since they had reduced half of their fleet to toothpicks.

“Very well,” said the Admiral with a grudging look, after a lengthy pause. “I accept both of those terms. I shall take you to our nearest port after we finish rescue operations. You deserve that much at least, for what we’ve done to you.”

Geiger looked around at the galleon’s torn sails and fallen mast once again. “Will your ship be able to even sail anymore?”

Regulus nodded. “Aye. Your flying machines wounded her, but the  _Leviathan_ is a tough girl. She’ll be limited to under ten knots, but she can still sail.”

“Good. Then we’ll head out as soon as you’re ready.”

Geiger paused, hesitating for a moment. Then he stood straighter and offered the Admiral a salute — they’d established that they weren’t enemies, not exactly, and Geiger wanted to at least offer the man the respect due an Admiral. Admiral Regulus and his yellow friend seemed to have been caught off-guard by the gesture, but after another moment of bewildered shock they both replied with salutes of their own, placing their fists against their breasts.

The General finally withdrew from his salute. He thought about apologizing for what he’d done to the Admiral’s fleet, but eventually thought better of it. No need to stoke that fire. Instead, Geiger turned to his people. “Back to the  _McKinley,_  men!”

His Marines began taking the rope ladder back down to their waiting boat, moving quickly. When Geiger’s turn came, however, he paused. The American threw a glance over his shoulder at the Imperial Admiral and his crew. They were all watching him intently; they were not necessarily hostile looks, but they sure as hell weren’t warm and friendly, either.

Geiger sighed, and began taking the rope ladder down to the waiting boat.  _What in God’s name have we been dragged into?_

 


	2. Second Contact

**Just a quick note here: I changed one of the carriers present — the _USS Saginaw Bay_ has been replaced by the  _USS Hollandia,_  mostly just so that I could bring Marine Fighter Squadron VMF-122 into the fic. Maybe I could've just had them take off from the  _Saginaw Bay,_ but I like historical accuracy wherever it can be applied. Ok, now onto the chapter.**

**ABECEAN SEA**

**_USS MOUNT MCKINLEY_ **

**0905 HOURS**

**15 OF HEARTHFIRE 4E 205**

"Are you sure about this, Jiggs?"

Back in the  _Mount McKinley's_ bridge, Roy Geiger looked up from the parchment he had in his hands to meet Rupertus' gaze. The USMC commander had a look of concern about him. He asked again, "Are you sure the men are ready to know? It's not as if we have any solid knowledge of anything yet."

The Commanding General cocked a brow at the man. "William, have you forgotten everything we've seen in the past hour? Red fog rolls over us like something out of a nightmare, and when we come out of it, Peleliu's gone, night has turned to day, and we ended up under attack by a fleet of wooden ships that fired  _lightning bolts_ at us. You and I have  _seen_ everything happen with our own two eyes — and so have our men. There's no point in trying to hide it from them, and they should be the ones to know everything."

"But hearing it from their very own general… it might cause panic," Rupertus warned, his brows puckering ever so slightly. "Our men may be tough, but even the hardiest Marine would be shaken if he were told that he was transported into another entire  _world._ By something like  _magic,_ no less," he all but spat the word as a curse.

"You're probably right," sighed Geiger, shaking his head before taking a sip from the mug in his other hand. In local Imperial time it was just a few hours before noon, but to Geiger it wasn't even 7 AM. "But again: what is the point in hiding it? The men all suspect or  _know_ that something's happened. I guarantee it. If we tell them nothing, they'll start to distrust us — and until we know exactly what situation we're in, we're going to need all the trust of our men."

Rupertus stared at Geiger for several long, pensive seconds, before giving him a slow nod. "Very well, general. I just hope that our men don't take it too hard."

Geiger returned the nod. Just then, the radio operator spoke up. "Ready to transmit message, sir?"

After nodding to the operator, Geiger set down his coffee and picked up the nearby radio receiver. The Commanding General took a single steadying breath and glanced down at his paper, where he had written a short speech. He began to speak.

"Attention all US Navy personnel. This is your Commanding General speaking. I have an important announcement to make, regarding our current situation."

He paused for a moment, waiting. In his mind's eye he could visualize all activity in his fleet grinding to a complete halt, from the Marines in their transports to the engine crew below decks. Even the rowdiest sailor would have quieted down by now, to better hear his General. When Geiger felt it right, he spoke again, reading from his paper.

"I'm sure that you've all become aware of strange happenings, ever since that red fog rolled over us back in Peleliu and we got attacked by those wooden ships. But when I spoke with the surrendered Admiral of the fleet that attacked us, I learned more about what's happened. And quite frankly, the explanation given seems too crazy to be true — but it's the only explanation we have. And, ironically enough, probably makes more sense than anything else I can think of."

Another pause. Geiger waited a few more seconds, recomposing his thoughts. When he was ready, he let the hammer fall. "We're not in the Pacific anymore, men. Hell, I don't think we're even on  _Earth_ anymore."

To his side, Geiger could see Rupertus bowing his head slightly, as if in defeat — or concession. He plowed onward through his speech. "When I went to speak with the Admiral of the surrendered fleet just a short while ago, he told me that the reason for our being here was because he helped bring us here… with the use of  _magic._ "

"No, I am not making a joke," Geiger immediately added. "The locals —  _Imperials,_ they call themselves — said it was magic. And I myself saw more of this supposed  _magic_  in action, up-close. These people don't actually speak English. Whatever language they use, somehow their words are translated to us in real-time, so I was able to perfectly understand the Admiral's every word, and he, mine."

He took a moment again to let his people digest what they'd heard. By now, there'd be people in utter disbelief, looking around their fellows wondering if they'd heard correctly. But they'd believe him; they had no choice, after being faced with all the impossibilities of this day. Geiger continued: "I will take the time now to inform you that these Imperials are not our enemy. And we may be in another world, but there are still humans — in fact, the Admiral of the fleet had almost Roman or Greek features."

Another hammer was about to fall, and Geiger braced himself before saying it. "But at the same time… not all of his crew was human. Who I assume was the Admiral's second-in-command looked kinda like a tall man with golden skin and pointed ears. Honest to God, he looked like something out of Buck Rogers. My radio operator told me that if any of you've read John Tolkien's  _The Hobbit,_  he looks like an  _elf,"_  the unfamiliar word rolled strangely off his tongue, _"_ so that's what we've decided to call them as well, until we know what the Imperials call 'em — copyright laws be damned."

A brief chuckle swept the  _McKinley's_ bridge, one that Geiger hoped was being passed around the other ships as well. He allowed it to pass before continuing. "After having spoken to the Admiral of the Imperial fleet, it's been decided that we have no reason yet to view them or their non-human crew members as hostiles. They've peacefully surrendered, and are willing to lead us to the nearest port of safe anchorage, where we have agreed to discuss our circumstances. But before that, I've agreed to help the Admiral retrieve his men, as an act of goodwill. As of this moment, any Imperial Marines who have boarded our ships are to be led  _non-violently_ onto the top decks, where they can be retrieved by their own ships; and any motorboats that can be deployed will be used to help the Imperials rescue their men overboard. Only once that's done will we head off."

Geiger paused, but this time it was in contemplation. He'd reached the end of his manuscript, but at length he decided to add his own part to the end. "I know this all sounds crazy. Believe me, I can hardly believe it myself. But it's everything we know so far, and we won't be able to learn anything else until we reach safe anchorage so that I can discuss the circumstances surrounding our arrival with the Imperial Admiral. I promise I won't withhold whatever I find — for better or for worse. But keep this in mind: whatever happens, we're still men of the United States Navy. It doesn't matter that we're all that represents it on this world now. Our strength lies in our unity. And now, more than ever, we are going to need that unity."

He lapsed into a thoughtful silence. "That will be all. Return as you all were."

"That was a good parting note, General," Rupertus remarked approvingly as Geiger left the radio. "I'm sure the men will appreciate your candor."

"I hope so," muttered Geiger, reaching for his coffee again. "I think I'm gonna go get some fresh air on the deck, maybe it'll wake me up better. Let me know if anything comes up."

...

 

**ABECEAN SEA**

**_USS ORMSBY_ **

**1045 HOURS**

**15 OF HEARTHFIRE 4E 205**

The rescue operations went well, all things considered. It took about an hour to thoroughly scour the wreckage for survivors. A number overboard Imperials were saved, despite the fact that the drowning men mistrusted the Americans that were trying to help them — to say nothing of their strange motorboats, which were so alien-looking and made such threatening growling noises that they tended to swim  _away_ from help rather than towards it. This resulted in some of the Americans needing to forcibly haul the Imperials onto their boats, which sometimes resulted in them getting accidentally hurt by the panicking survivors. But in spite of that, no more open violence broke out between the two groups again.

Only after it was clear that there were no more people to save did the two fleets set sail for anchorage, with the wounded Imperial ships leading the way before the hulking American ones. With their duty accomplished, all the Marines that had been out in rescue operations returned to their ships to await in transit. So it was that Nick found himself sitting on his cot back on the  _USS Ormsby,_  contemplating everything that had happened thus far in the day.

He still couldn't believe what he and all the other Marines had heard over the intercom earlier. Even now, his mind was reeling from the implication. They were all in another world, with no known way of returning as of yet — effectively, they were trapped here.

Nick himself wouldn't be too affected, once he got over the initial shock. He hadn't had much back in the States anyways. His mother had died from heart disease five years ago, and he hadn't ever been very close to his father. He didn't even have a sweetheart back home waiting for him. Not that he ever wanted to return to California anyways. No, Nick would eventually recover from the shock, with a minimal sense of loss. But Connor and Mark…

The Marine looked around and spotted them quickly. Mark was lying back on his cot, staring longingly at a picture of his family he always kept with him. Connor was seated on his own bed, sadly studying the baseball cap he carried with him, even into battle — a gift from his father, from the last game they'd attended together. Neither of them had sweethearts or wives back home either, but both of them had been much closer to their families than Nick ever had been with his.

The two Marines seemed to be coping so far, but with the other men it was a mixed bag. Some Marines were actually happy to be away from the world they'd left, whether it was because they'd escaped an unpaid debt or they just found the idea of a new world to explore to be exciting. Nick, for all his love he had of Earth, couldn't deny that this new one piqued his interest, too.

Others, however, had been hit hard. Even now, a couple of Marines were choking back tears as they looked at pictures of their loved ones back in the world they'd left. Some were pacing the room, sulking and ill tempered. A few others just stared at the nearest wall, unmoving, either in shock or disbelief, or perhaps both. A rumor had recently begun floating around, too. It was just a rumor, but there tended to be elements of truth even in those, and this one made Nick uneasy and sick to his stomach.

Word was that a Marine hadn't been able to cope with his depression, and dealt with it the only way he knew: a .45 round through the roof of his mouth.

Thankfully, the intercom sounded just then, serving to effectively clear his mind of the dark thought with the message it brought.  _"Attention all personnel: we will soon be arriving at our anchorage. General Rupertus has made the decision to allow the Marines ashore, provided that they do not cause trouble. Be ready to disembark in thirty minutes."_

A few of the Marines seemed to be uplifted by the news, and gave each other smiles and claps on the back. Even Connor and Mark seemed happier for it. Nick's smile was one of relief; some fresh air and a beer would help lighten the mood a bit, for sure. He looked over to the two other Marines and spoke up, "Hey, you two. How about we go out to take over the nearest pub when we land ashore?"

"I'm up for a beer," Mark replied evenly, safely tucking away his picture.

Connor nodded his agreement, putting the cap back over his head. "I'll just be glad to get off this ship."

Nick settled back onto his bed with a smile. "This'll be an experience… Say, you think these locals even have a decent brew? I mean, I think I'd really rather have a cold one than some wine. That's what medieval guys drank back then, right?"

"Because of problems with water purity, yeah," Connor replied. "But I dunno, we might be surprised. If there's one thing we can trust, it's the fact that people throughout all of history have found some way to make alcohol out of what they had. Beer wasn't that hard to make, either. We shouldn't have anything to worry about."

Some time later, the deck shifted beneath their feet as their ship hove to. All the Marines took it as their cue to disembark. When Nick and his friends reached the exit, full of bustling, crowding Marines, they squinted briefly as the harsh tropical sunlight hit them. Their fellows pushed them out onto the gangplank from behind, eager to get off the floating tin can. Only when they'd made it to the wooden pier it led to did they get the chance to take a good look around.

They'd landed at a tropical island with a shoreline that alternated between dark stone and sandy beaches. The docks dominated most of the shoreline. Smaller wooden ships were moored to the piers, while the larger ships bobbed at anchor in the deeper waters. Palm trees grew sporadically everywhere, and off in the distance, they saw what appeared to be a bustling town with a dirt road leading to it. All the Imperial ships with their red banners and pennants had already docked, leaving the Americans' smaller ships to dock wherever they could while their larger ships remained afloat in the deeper water some distance out; there was no way they'd be able to safely come any closer with their deep drafts.

They didn't miss all the crowds of people openly staring at them, either. Civilians dressed in rough-looking belted tunics and smocks had all stopped to get a good look at the strange men wearing strange uniforms coming out from strange ships. So far as Nick could tell, they were all human, and racially diverse. And of course, there were also the multitudes of Imperial troops lining the shore, armored in steel, leather and chainmail, their aesthetic once again reminiscent to that of the Romans, save for their medieval knight-like weapons.

It quickly became clear that they were just acting as a security force, however. The armored men made no threatening acts save for holding their weapons at the ready, including several soldiers armored in leather pointing flame-wreathed hands at them. When the Imperial Admiral, distinguishable by his cloak and crested helmet, and his tall second-in-command approached them with what appeared to be General Geiger and a subordinate American officer, they even relaxed a bit and lowered their weapons. By the quickness with which they did it, they must've already heard that there would be strangers coming to the island. When they watched the commanders enter a waiting wagon to take them to the command post, the armored soldiers finally began to disperse. Only then did the Americans feel safe enough to advance again.

"Looks like we've gotten ourselves a warm welcome," Connor remarked dryly, eyeing a few of the Imperial troops giving all the incoming Marines strange looks as the trio made their way down the path towards the town. "Something tells me we're not gonna get the same reception as back in Australia, while we were there."

"We probably shouldn't get into trouble here if we can help it," Mark commented, glancing around. He caught sight of a couple of Imperials with bandages around their arms giving them ugly looks; survivors of the sea battle, no doubt. "These guys aren't too pleased with us."

"Probably not," Nick conceded, ignoring the pointed stares of a couple of passing merchants hauling a wagon of supplies to the docks. "We're the foreigners here. Let's be on our best behavior, boys."

It took them a good while before they'd reached the town, walking by foot. Enough civilians and troops marched through the central road to kick up a dust cloud and give rise to a rather impressive tumult. Draft animals brayed and merchants advertised their wares in wooden market stalls, the sound rising into an ear-rattling din.

There was a sense of urgency in the air, too. It spurred the civilians through their days and made the guards stand up just a bit straighter, their eyes just a bit more vigilant than normal. Nick knew the atmosphere too well; this was just as much a military base as it was a town, and they were all on high alert.  _These people are at war. Conflict is a universal concept, it seems._

It took them a while to find their way to the nearest pub. The civilians were too shy or afraid of the Americans to stay and talk. Only once they'd decided to speak with a nearby Imperial soldier did the man point them to a large wooden structure with some drab red banners hanging off its façade.  _The Drunken Dragon,_  he called it; and surely enough, once they got close enough they could see what looked like a faded gray dragon and a mug of ale on the decorative banners.

The inside wasn't much to look at. While bigger than most pubs he'd been to, Nick wasn't impressed by the wooden interior, dirt floor, and gaping windows that let in dust and insects from the outside. None of the many patrons currently drinking here seemed to mind, and most of them even seemed to ignore the newcomers entirely. Most were human, but some of them weren't. Nick spotted a couple of short, swarthy men seated at a table with pointed ears and almond-shaped eyes, and he caught Mark ogling a waitress: a pointy-eared, buxom woman with ashen skin, dark hair, and ruby-red eyes.

 _Must be more of those_   _elves,_  he thought, _though they don't match the description the General gave us._   _Maybe there are different types of elves, like the different races of men back on Earth._

Connor was first to speak his thoughts. "Well, this place certainly has a  _rustic_ feel to it."

"Rustic?" Mark snorted, finally pulling his eyes away from the well-endowed elven woman. "The most run-down bar back in Oahu would probably shine compared to this place. It doesn't even have glass windows!"

"Or a ceiling fan," Nick remarked, wiping away a strand of black hair plastered to his forehead. It was hot down here in the tropics, just like back in the Pacific; at least that much hadn't changed. "No point in complaining. It's probably as good as we're probably gonna get around here. I doubt another bar would be much better."

When the trio approached the bar and sat at the stools, they were approached by the bartender: a rotund, middle-aged man with a balding head and a surly face. Flinty gray eyes flitted between the Americans in their strange combat uniforms. "Who're you lot? Mercenaries? Didn't think the Imperials allowed you here anymore, since the war began."

"We're not really mercenaries," Nick replied. "We're… just some newcomers to this place. Came here with some Admiral, think his name was Regulus."

The bartender thoughtfully scratched at the gray stubble on his jaw, but before he could speak again, Mark asked, "So, what kind of stuff do you have on tap? Got any beer?"

Now the bartender turned towards Mark. "I've got beer, yeah. Three drakes apiece."

All three Marines stared at him blankly. "Drakes?" asked Mark.

"Yeah, drakes," the man replied, his head bobbing up and down. "You know, Septims? Coin? You realize you've gotta pay for it, right?"

The three Marines froze in realization. They had no money — or rather, money that was worth anything in this place. As the men exchanged awkward glanced, wondering how they'd pay for their drinks, they heard the bartender sigh. "I'll also accept a barter if you don't have coin."

Connor seemed to get an idea, and rifled through his pockets before coming up with a foil-wrapped chunk of chocolate from his K ration. "Here, how about this," he began, unraveling some of the foil before placing the bar on the tabletop. "Bar of Hershey's for the beer?"

The man seemed confused, and picked up the bar to look at it in confusion. "What  _is_ this?"

"Chocolate," Connor answered. "It's a popular treat back where we come from. It's mainly made from something called  _cocoa…_ if that means anything to you."

He seemed dubious about the brown, wrapped bar. At length, he took a cautious bite off the edge of the bar. When he started chewing, his eyes widened, and he pulled away to look at it in shock. "Akatosh above, this thing is…  _sweet._  Very sweet."

"…But in a good way, right?" Connor asked, hopeful.

The man seemed to consider it for a moment. He then took another bite, this time slowly savoring the treat. Eventually, a small smile crept onto his face, and he nodded. "Yeah. It's… good. Really good. Alright, I guess this is good enough. I'll get you your drinks."

The man turned and walked into a back room, taking another bite of the sweet chocolate before leaving their view. When he was gone, Connor sighed dolefully, looking at his empty pocket. "There goes my chocolate ration…"

Nick gave him a solicitous pat on the back. "You're a lifesaver, pal. Me and Mark'll give you half of ours when we get back to our stuff, we promise." A nod from the other Marine just about set the promise in stone. That seemed enough to mollify Connor.

Just then, the bartender returned with three steins on a platter, filled with an earthy-smelling brew. When Nick took a swig from it, he found the beer to have an almost sweet, nutty taste. Not bad at all, if a bit more watery than he'd have liked.

"At least the beer isn't too bad," Mark eventually conceded, taking another sip. "Though something tells me that we probably won't be able to trade away chocolate for every drink. If we can't get back home, it's gonna start going scarce."

"No Hershey's company to make more," Nick added solemnly, looking around at the bar. He spoke again in a low voice, wary of the bartender still nearby, happily chewing on Connor's chocolate. "Or a lot of other things, come to think of it. Look at this place. These Imperials are living in the dark ages here. I'm used to living without luxuries, but living in a place like this… no jukebox for tunes, no ceiling fans or air conditioning, no lights…"

"They're a bit lacking in the technology department," Connor agreed quietly. "But that didn't stop them from putting a hurting on some of our guys."

A dark cloud rolled over the three men, remembering the fight they'd had on their own ship. The Imperial boarders had killed quite a few of their guys. Even though they'd bled them heavily and all but forced them off the ship, it still hurt to see your fellow Marine die.

"Roman wannabes," Mark muttered darkly, glowering at the tabletop. "Can't believe we let them board us like that. Should've blown 'em out of the water…"

"These guys are more than just sword-swinging savages," Connor remarked. "They've got those  _Orcs_ with them, and they've got magic. Heard that the enemy ships fired lightning bolts and fireballs at our ships — that's how they sunk one of our guys."

Mark nodded solemnly. "Yeah. I heard. I also heard that in some part of the ship, during our fight with the boarders, some of our guys just started running away and screaming as if they had Satan's own hellhounds snapping at their heels. Another guy just went crazy, too, and started  _attacking his own friends._  Poor sucker actually stabbed someone, and wouldn't stop until someone knocked him out."

Now it was Nick's turn to glower at the tabletop. "Magic," he muttered disdainfully. "That's what got us into this whole mess to start with. I don't like it. Why don't their magic guys just use a spell and  _poof_ us back to Peleliu? I'd rather fend off a banzai charge with my combat knife than fight more of those giant green men. Or magic users…"

Behind them, the door opened again as more people entered. Nick didn't pay it any mind, but Connor did. When the man looked back, his eyes flew wide open in shock, and he whispered, " _What in God's name is that thing?!"_

Nick and Mark looked over their shoulders. Connor was staring at a group of about five soldiers clad in Imperial armor sitting down at a table, being attended by a waitress. Four of them looked like regular people, looking so mundane and ordinary that Nick would have just passed his gaze over them without a second thought — until he noticed that one of them had a  _brown, scaly tail_.

The Marine froze, and judging by the way Mark suddenly went tense, he must've seen it too. Nick's gaze traveled up the length of the tail, his eyes slowly widening in shock and horror as he took in the tail's owner. The creature sitting at the table had a body shape like a man's, but while its humanlike hands ended in taloned fingers, its reptilian face was by far its most un-humanlike feature. In fact, its narrow, predatory skull reminded Nick of nothing more than the artist's renditions he'd seen of some carnivorous dinosaur —  _velociraptor._

The three Marines couldn't help but stare in horrified anticipation, unable to pull their eyes away. It was like sitting in a theater watching a horror movie, watching the monster creeping up on the characters and just waiting for that terrible moment when it would strike. None of them noticed that neither the Imperials sitting with the lizard man at the table nor the elven waitress taking its order seemed to be afraid of it.

Their stares were too obvious to remain unnoticed. One of the Imperials sitting at the table saw the three Marines staring at them. His relaxed expression fell and darkened immediately. "Oh great… What do you lot staring at?"

As one, the four other Imperials, including the lizard man, turned their heads to stare back. Under the sudden weight of their gazes, the three Marines suddenly found themselves exchanging glances between themselves and the Imperials. At last, Nick pointed at the creature and asked, "What the  _hell_ are you? _"_

The lizard man raised his brows, blinking its green, snakelike eyes. It stared at them first in confusion, and then with indignation — or what Nick assumed as such. There was minimal change in the lizard's expression, but its narrowed eyes spoke volumes.

All the Marines started when they heard the smooth yet unsettling tenor of its voice. "What kind of question is that?" it demanded. "I'm a person, same as you!"

"You're a  _lizard,"_  Connor sputtered, still staring in shock as his mind attempted to grasp the concept of  _talking animals_. "You shouldn't be talking. Why are you talking?"

"Maybe  _you_ should be the ones not talking." One of the Imperial soldiers shot up from his seat. He had short black hair and blue-green eyes, with a clean-shaven face and strikingly Gallic features. He was slight and lean like a Doberman, and his scowl painted him just as fiercely as one. "Dances-With-Swords is my friend and comrade, and I won't have you mistreating him! Shut your mouths and keep to your drinks, or  _leave._ "

"Settle down, Gregory," said the biggest of the five. He had a light, dark beard and piercing cobalt eyes. "I wouldn't want to provoke those men into a fight. Look at their thin arms — we might accidentally break them."

Mark barked a short, scornful laugh. "Yeah, good luck with that. You dark-age punks are out of our league."

"Is that so?" Another human legionnaire rose from the table. He had a light brown beard and fierce hazel eyes. "Because from the battle back on your ships, it seems that most of you  _Americans_  do you fighting with ranged, enchanted weapons of some sort, not in close combat like a true warrior. What do you think, John?"

"I think you might be right, James," said the legionnaire beside him as he also came to stand. His beard was a bit darker and sparser than his friend's, but his thunderous glower was no less intense. "Maybe these  _Americans_  have forgotten about what it's like to fight like  _men_."

Nick could feel a flare of anger rise within him. He met their scowls with his own dark glower. "Those are some bold claims, Imperials," the Marine growled, pushing himself off his stool. He was pleased to notice Connor and Mark doing the same, glowering and rising to their feet. The three Americans stalked forward until they were at the middle of the room. "Your mouths keep writing checks like that, then our fists are gonna start cashing them."

"We took down one of your big ugly green guys," Mark bragged, rolling his shoulders, but maintaining a deceptively relaxed stance that still allowed him to prepare for a counterattack in a moment's notice: arms spread with hands on hips, feet slightly spread and firmly balanced, ready to shift or pivot. "We're not afraid of couple of  _palookas_  like you."

The legionnaires obviously weren't familiar with the Americans' terminology, but they understood the challenge. John and James looked at their companions. "Well lads? Shall we teach them a lesson?"

Gregory and the lizard man didn't budge; they obviously didn't want to fight. James looked over to the Imperial in the back. "Julius?"

With a thunderous scowl, the man finally pushed back from the table and rose. He wasn't especially tall, but his arms were thick and bulged with muscles. Cobalt eyes seemed to pierce right through Nick. "I've had enough of you impudent people. You need to be taught some manners."

Nick spread his arms out in a challenge. "Well then come on ahead, tough guy. Step right up _."_

Just then, the lizard man shot up from his seat, gesturing in a placating manner while shouting, "Julius, John, James, settle down! Come now, we didn't come here to fight! We came here to drink in memory of fallen friends!"

"And these are the people responsible for our fallen friends!" John snapped back.

"So now," James added, cracking his knuckles, "we're gonna repay them the favor."

The three Imperials charged. James went for Connor, Julius went for Mark, and Nick found John coming at him, fists raised for his opening strike.

Of course, all Marines went through intense close combat training; their regimen combined elements of jiu jitsu, savate, wrestling, and even rough-and-tumble fighting. They boxed, they grappled, and they learned throws and takedown, all with and without any weapons. So when the Marines saw the Imperials' fists flying at their faces, they didn't default into dirty brawling like some back-alley street thugs.

Connor leapt away from James' first punch to avoid it altogether, launching a jab to prevent his foe from following through with the attack. Julius came at Mark like a charging bull, but the Marine went low and returned the tackle, killing his momentum and grabbing the Imperial below the waist, allowing him to then lift the armored man high and then slam him back onto the ground with a crash. That was all that Nick could see before he found John's fist flying at his face.

Nick raised his forearm like a boxer to block the incoming strike, and immediately countered with a jab to John's face. The man's head rocked back, and a spray of blood flew, but he recovered quickly and sent a snap kick into Nick's leg, throwing him off balance and allowing him to send two alternating hooks into his face. Each one felt like to the Marine like he'd just kissed a passing train. Nick stumbled away with a split lip and a cut cheek, snarling in pain. Before John could land his next punch, the Marine blocked it and counterattacked with a haymaker.

It was a powerful, brutal strike. John staggered back several feet from the force. Nick darted forwards and grabbed the Imperial before throwing him against a nearby wooden support beam. John hit the beam and rebounded to crash against the floor, gasping in pain. To his credit, he shook himself and immediately tried to rise. Nick's knee flying into the side of his head to throw it against the wooden beam again precluded the attempt.

As the Imperial collapsed to the floor, groaning and momentarily out of the fight, Nick looked back to his friends. Connor and James were busy wrestling on the ground, throwing punches and trying to get leverage over the other. Mark and Julius looked like they were in a boxing match, with Julius throwing punches and Mark bobbing and weaving out of harm's way, before throwing a surprise jab at his nose. The brawny Imperial suddenly caught the arm mid-jab, and then pulled Mark in to punch the Marine's stomach, allowing him to grab the American and then  _throw_ him like a rag doll, one-handed. Mark was sent crashing several feet away, where he then lay, stunned.  _Holy smokes. That guy doesn't look like much, but he's a goddamn gorilla._

Julius, now thoroughly pissed off, grabbed a nearby table and began to heave it for a throw. Nick wasted no time in charging at the man's back and catching him in a rear stranglehold. The Imperial dropped the table and tried to pry Nick's arm away from his throat, but the American used his leverage to throw the armored man to the ground and then climb on top of him, rearing his bloodied fist back for another brutal haymaker to shatter his teeth.

But it never came. Both Americans and Imperials froze, fists still half raised in anticipation of a punch and hands still raised to ward off a strike, when the distant rumble of guns reached them.

...

 

A ride in a horse-drawn carriage was the typical image of romanticism back in the United States. But the wagon that Andrew Mitchell had taken with General Geiger, Admiral Regulus, and the Admiral's tall, yellow friend — Trechtus, apparently was his name, whose kind was known as  _High Elves_ or  _Altmer_  — was anything but the image of romanticism. The ride on the unpaved dirt road was bumpy, and the wagon seat had no cushions. The Lieutenant Commander tried not to make it too obvious that he was uncomfortable in his seat, especially since the Imperials didn't seem to mind, but he really would have preferred coming here by jeep.

At last, they arrived at Stirk Island's Imperial command post, which just happened to be a large congregation of tents arranged in neat, orderly files. Imperial troops gave looks of confusion at the strange newcomers, but nobody stopped them until they'd reached the center of the camp. There, Admiral Regulus dismounted and beckoned the others to follow.

Regulus led them to the largest of the tents, guarded by a pair of tall Imperial men clad in enameled, crimson plate armor — praetorians, if Andrew could liken them to their Roman equivalents; bodyguards charged with protecting an important military figure. The interior of the tent was spacious but Spartan, featuring little more than what was necessary: weapon and armor racks, storage chests, and a large table surrounded by chairs with strategic maps of the island, which dominated the center.

Standing over the table inspecting a map of Stirk Island was a strong-looking Imperial clad in ornate armor. His dark brown hair was cut short, and his light stubble helped add to his grizzled veteranappearance. When he heard their approach, the man raised his head to look at them. Dark brown eyes radiated with intelligence and purpose, but also deep weariness… and no little anger. Something told Andrew that this man had already been informed of their battle at sea.

The Imperial Admiral gave the other man a short nod. "Greetings, Commander Aurelius."

"Admiral Regulus," the other Imperial replied curtly as he straightened to his full height. His tone was bereft of warmth and cheer. "If you're here, then I can assume that you've brought the Imperial Combined Fleet with you — or at least, what remains of it."

Both the Admiral's and Trechtus' gazes flickered downwards, and both men nodded, almost guiltily.

Commander Aurelius next turned his stern gaze onto the strangers. "And I should be safe to assume that you two, you so-called  _Americans,_  belong to the party responsible for the destruction of over half of an entire Imperial fleet?"

Roy Geiger opened his mouth, presumably to argue, but Regulus quickly came to his defense. "Do not blame these people. They were acting only in self-defense. I was the one who gave the order to attack, after misidentifying them as Dominion ships."

Trechtus spoke up next, his head bowed solemnly and his tone one of shame. "And I take full responsibility for bringing them here, through use of my experimental spell. So if you must administer a court-martial, then I am ready to face the consequences."

Both of the Americans present shifted uneasily; a court-martial was no laughing matter, and given how these Imperials worked, it wouldn't be hard to imagine that these Imperials would hand out Roman-style executions even to ranking officers who failed their duty. Indeed, as Commander Aurelius' hard gaze bounced between Trechtus and Regulus, Andrew Mitchell wondered if they would even walk out of this tent with their heads still attached to their necks.

At last, Aurelius let out a draining sigh, his shoulders slumping. "I will not give you two court-martials, but it'll be a different story when the higher-ups hear about what happened — and they  _have_ to know. A lot of good men and ships were lost today. Unless you find some way to make up for these losses…"

"I understand. But we'll worry about this later," Admiral Regulus interjected, shaking his head. "Right now, our concerns should lie in these newcomers and their arrival." He gestured with a hand towards the Americans, beckoning to them.

Roy Geiger shot Andrew a cautious sidelong look, before stepping forth. The General's voice was firm and resolute as he spoke. "I am General Roy Geiger, and my companion here is Lieutenant Commander Andrew Mitchell. We represent the navy of the United States of America — or at least, what is left of it — and now, I formally request that you explain to us  _everything_ concerning where we are and how we got here."

"I can do that," Trechtus volunteered, drawing the attention of everyone in the tent. The Altmer took a moment to clear his throat before beginning. "It's a simple explanation, really. I, along with a number of other mages, performed a ritual for a powerful but experimental spell that I devised. The spell must've gone awry, and instead of having its intended effect, it brought you and your fleet here — across the veil between our two worlds."

"So we really  _are_ in another world," said General Geiger, his eyebrows furrowing deeply. "You have swords, steel armor, sail ships; we have rifles, grenades, and airplanes. You have magic, and we don't; but we have gunpowder, and you don't."

"No magic?" asked Aurelius, cocking a brow. "What kind of a barbaric world could you live in without magic? It's a mark of civilization!"

Andrew gave the man a wry smile, and answered, "Funny that you say that. Back at home, we tended to see the cultures who still believed in magic over physical, logical reality as being primitive-minded."

"Just like the Dwemer," Regulus muttered to himself, evidently awed by the thought. "But they had magic, and you don't. Yet, your constructs — especially your seafaring vessels — are much more powerful than any automaton I know of. How could you possibly have created such massive machines? And your long weapons — those things can instantly kill men in armor! Surely, they must be enchanted?"

"No, sir," came Andrew's easy reply. "Everything we have was made through the marvels of modern technology, engineering, and chemistry."

The three natives stared blankly at the Americans. Regulus finally shook his head and said, "Technology and engineering are terms I recognize, usually associated with the Dwemer, but  _chemistry?_ I've never heard of it. Are you certain that  _nothing_ you have works with magic?"

"No magic," affirmed Geiger with a shake of his head. "Magic simply doesn't exist where we come from, back on… Earth."

"You call your world  _Earth?"_  snorted Aurelius. "I suppose we missed out by calling our world  _Nirn_ instead of  _Rock._ "

"This is truly fascinating," Trechtus breathed in wonder, beholding the pair of Americans. "You hail from a world without magic, and have thus found other ways of doing things which are, by no means, less effective than ours. In fact, I'd say that the lack of magic has allowed your civilization to advance by bounds compared to ours!"

"And yet, it was  _your_ spell that brought us here," Geiger reminded. "Which leads me to my next question —  _can you take us back?"_

Trechtus' smile faltered. "It's possible," he hedged, "but I would need to fix my spell so I don't risk bringing in  _another_ fleet from  _another_ world. I'd also need another sigil stone, another massive soul gem, and more mages to replace the ones you killed… I might be able to return you. But it would me take a long time before that point."

The two Americans took that in with hard stares. At last, Geiger bowed his head. "I was afraid of that. So effectively, we are stuck here."

Andrew rubbed the nape of his neck, unsettled. He wasn't comfortable with the thought that they were trapped someplace where magic formed the fundamental basis on which the world worked. The Lieutenant Commander was a man who was comfortable with the spheres of logic and rationality — something that magic most certainly had no place in. It couldn't be, if it had reacted so badly as to bring him here. How safe was this magic of theirs?

Just then, Geiger looked back at Trechtus and asked, "What was your spell intended to do anyways? Just how badly did it malfunction?"

"Technically, it didn't completely malfunction," Trechtus replied. "It was intended to reach into another world, which it did… but what it was meant to do was take our enemies at sea and send them to that world, where they'd be trapped forever. Otherwise, a powerful enough mage might be able to return them to Nirn, to say nothing of the enemy's many skilled mages."

Geiger and Andrew immediately bristled. "Enemies?" asked the General, confused. Then, his features lit up in realization. "Those guys you mentioned before, the… Dominion? Admiral Regulus told me he thought that's who we were. Do they use ships like ours?"

Regulus answered him. "No, it was more the fact that one of your banners had an eagle on it that convinced me — the Aldmeri Dominion also uses the eagle as its sigil bird. As far as I know, nobody on Nirn uses ships like yours."

"Who are they anyways? The Aldmeri Dominion. Why are you two at war?"

Aurelius answered him, in an angry growl. "They are a nation ruled by the High Elves — Trechtus' kind; and we are at war because they want to destroy the Empire, and conquer all of Tamriel. They see all other races as beneath theirs, and will stop at nothing to see us all either dead, or fettered in Moonstone shackles as their slaves."

"This isn't our first war with them, either," added Trechtus. "The Aldmeri Dominion and the Tamrielic Empire had their first war about thirty years ago. They nearly destroyed the Empire in that war, managed to even take the Imperial capital city. The Imperials managed to fight them off and settle on a peace afterward — but really, it was just the beginning of a thirty-year cold war. And just a couple of months ago, it became a hot one."

"And now, we've just as well lost the most important naval battle to date," growled Regulus lowly. "All because of me. No doubt, they'll land whatever forces they can at Anvil, and then use that to strike deep into Cyrodiil and the Heartlands…"

As the Admiral began to wallow in his failure, Geiger and Andrew turned to exchange a look of utter shock. Andrew just knew that the General must've been thinking the same thing that he was: this enemy of theirs, the Aldmeri Dominion, is not much different from those they'd left behind on Earth.

 _But just how much of that is truth?_  Andrew couldn't help but wonder. These Imperials clearly saw them as a force of evil, but were they purposefully vilifying them for some sort of propaganda campaign? Or was this a clear-cut case of good versus bad, like the Knight out to slay the Dragon? Andrew had always been a firm believer of  _shades of gray_ over  _black and white_  when looking at the world, and this should be no different — magic or otherwise.

Shouts of surprise suddenly reached their ears, as well as the familiar growl of an engine, and the men all turned to see what was happening. At first, Andrew saw nothing amongst the sea of red-clad, gesticulating Imperial soldiers, until they threw themselves out of the way of the figures roaring down the dirt road: a jeep, flanked by three Imperial horsemen to its sides and rear, all running at full speed.

"What in Oblivion is that  _thing?"_  asked Aurelius, aghast, as he witnessed the approaching jeep.

"A jeep," Geiger replied simply.

Seeing the Imperial's look of confusion, Andrew hastily explained, "Think of it as a horseless carriage that rides on wheels, powered by… well, something like magic."

Here, Admiral Regulus bristled indignantly. "I would prefer you spared us the condescension. Whatever you may think of those who believe in magic back from your world, we are  _not_ uneducated simpletons. That thing…" he gestured at the jeep, now coming to a stop, "…is a machine. The inner mechanisms that drive it may be beyond my ken, but I recognize a manmade construct when I see one."

Andrew, after staring at him in awe for several long seconds, bowed his head and muttered an apology. "S-sorry about that."

He quickly shuffled out of the tent to join Geiger at the jeep. The General quickly asked, "What's wrong? Has something happened?"

"Something's coming our way!" exclaimed the driver. "Our recon plane has spotted around a hundred surface targets approaching the island from the southwest! More wooden sailing ships!"

Behind them, Admiral Regulus and Commander Aurelius gasped. "The Dominion!" Regulus uttered, eyes wide. "They're here to take Stirk Island!"

Geiger turned to Regulus and demanded, "Did you know they were coming?"

The Admiral looked at him guiltily. "Somewhat. My fleet set out to intercept them, but they were a long distance from the island when my scouts spotted them. Then, in the chaos that followed involving our two fleets, I simply forgot about them."

Commander Aurelius suddenly turned to a nearby Imperial soldier and barked, "What're you standing there for? Go sound the alarm! Get word out to the garrisoned forces that we're going to be repelling an amphibious assault by Dominion troops!"

"I'll get back to my fleet and try to keep them away as long as possible!" Regulus snarled, putting his crested helm back on his head. Trechtus, at his side, nodded with a fiercely determined look. The Admiral, after a moment of thought, turned to the Americans next. "The enemy is nearly upon us. Perhaps it is not my place to ask, but I would humbly request for your aid in fending off the enemy."

Roy Geiger folded his arms across his chest, fixing Regulus with a hard stare. Andrew knew what he was thinking about:  _why should we help? Our ships are faster than anything they could have — we could leave and avoid this foreign conflict altogether._

But Andrew knew that Geiger wouldn't leave them. He'd seen the looks on the man's face as he'd studied the sinking remains of the Imperial fleet from the bridge of his command ship. He regretted having killed so many people who weren't even his true enemies. So it came as no surprise when the General gave Regulus a firm nod. "Alright. We'll help."

"Hop in, and I can take you all back to the docks," the jeep driver offered, patting the side of his door.

Seeing Regulus' reluctant look as he stared at the jeep, Geiger assured him, "Trust me: it's not a bad ride, and it'll be faster than going by horseback.

The Imperial glared at the jeep some more, but he gave in once he realized that the horsemen escorts' mounts were panting from having had to keep pace with it. So it was that Andrew and Geiger found themselves sharing the jeep with Admiral Regulus and Trechtus. The two Nirnians seemed uncomfortable with the jostle and jump of the wheels against the uneven road, but they were visibly astounded by the speed with which they moved.

It didn't take long before they reached the docks. When the jeep came to a stop, Regulus and Trechtus quickly dismounted, grateful to have solid earth beneath their feet again. Andrew half expected the two of them to bolt off without even another word. Instead, halfway out the door, Admiral Regulus suddenly paused. He seemed to think for a moment, before turning back to General Geiger and inclining his head. "I thank you for getting me here, General — and in case I do not survive the coming battle with the Dominion, then I would like to formally apologize for having trapped you and your men in our world. It was not my intent. I pray that the Divines allow you to someday return to where you came from…"

Then, almost in a voice too low to hear, "…and that They find the compassion to forgive me for causing the deaths of so many."

Trechtus' hand on his shoulder brought Regulus back to the present. The Admiral offered Geiger a quick salute, before turning and joining his friend. As he watched the two leave, Andrew felt himself overcome by newfound respect for the Imperial. He couldn't win this fight, not with the few ships he had — but that didn't stop him from making his final stand and completing his mission, even when knowing well that he would likely die.

"Wipe that look off your face, Lieutenant," Geiger scolded, startling Andrew into looking at him. "He's not gonna die. We won't let those Dominion bastards get close enough to kill anyone else. Driver! Get us back to the  _McKinley._  We've got work to do."

 

…

 

All was quiet in the cockpit of the F4U Corsair — or at least, as quiet as it could be with a 2000-horsepower Double Wasp radial engine running hot just a few feet ahead of the pilot's seat. Jesse "Rook" Morrison of Marine Fighter squadron VMF-122 looked out of his fighter plane's cockpit. The pilot's seat in a Corsair was elevated above the instrument panel, affording him an unobstructed view of his surroundings, especially of the sea about 6,000 feet below.

He and the 28 other Corsairs flying with him could very clearly see the incoming enemy fleet: about a hundred ships sailed directly towards Stirk Island from the southwest, arrayed into a giant spearhead formation. Their hulls were armored with a strange blue-green metal, and they tended to sink low to the water line. But just like their Imperial counterparts, they were mostly wood, with large triangular or square sails.

"For a fleet without wireless communications, they sure can sail together well," commented Jesse over the radio, scratching at his sandy blond hair under his flight helmet as his keen green eyes surveyed the ocean surface below, like an osprey on the hunt.

Another voice with a Texan accent came over the line, belonging to Michael "Cowboy" Jones, Jesse's wingman. "Ain't gonna do 'em much good, Rook. We'll tear 'em up a new one, easy peasy — wooden ships won't like bein' pumped full of incendiary fifty cals."

"And if not us, then the navy boys down below'll send 'em to kingdom come," Jesse added, looking back at Stirk Island's harbor. Both the steel American warships and the wooden Imperial sailships were moving into their positions, their preparations having just been completed not long ago.

The American ships bobbed patiently and quietly in the deeper waters. Every cannon and machine gun in the American fleet was aimed at the enemy fleet, waiting for the command to open fire — naval cannons had an effective range that could exceed six miles, but the Dominion had no way of knowing that. The American ships would wait until the possibility of the Dominion ships sailing back out of the kill zone had been negated.

Meanwhile, the Imperial close combat ships with their Marines sailed ahead to meet the Dominion ships head-on, and goad them into pressing the attack — all thirty of them. Stirk Island didn't have many to begin with, and many of those with Admiral Regulus had been sunk in their sea battle. There were supposedly also about fifty other Imperial ships, apparently meant for long-ranged attacks, but they were nowhere to be seen. Jesse still wasn't sure where they could've gone, but he didn't concern himself with that.  _Probably just some of that_ magic  _stuff I've heard people talk about. We were briefed about the possibility of invisible ships, after all._

A new voice suddenly came over the radio, belonging to their squadron leader: Hugh "Lightning" Taylor. The Californian's firm, commanding voice came clear through the line: "Alright men, remember the plan! We're alternating between strafing runs and cannon volleys from the ships. Don't let yourself get hit by one of those fireballs or lightning bolts — remember, they did kill a cruiser. Nothing says they can't do the same to us, if we're careless. But I know that's not gonna happen. We're too good for that. Now, let's teach these primitives about a little concept we like to call  _air superiority!"_

Whoops and hollers returned over the line as every fighter pilot voiced their agreement. Then, the twenty-eight F4U Corsairs of VMF-122 began their descent, making a wide banking turn into the enemy fleet's port side. Each fighter had a designated wingman, and each pair of planes would attack a single target to ensure their destruction. Jesse glanced behind him to see Michael's plane following him into their strafing run, before turning back ahead. He kept an eye on his airspeed indicator as the needle steadily climbed from up from 200 knots. _210… 220… 230…_

At last, the enemy fleet seemed to regain its wits and respond. A fireball flew from the deck of one Dominion ship. It was a terrible shot, going far over the fighter planes' heads, but it did succeed in setting off the rest of the fleet. Moments later, the sky lit up as fireballs, lightning bolts, and what looked like massive icy spikes flew right at them.

But the pilots didn't break off their attack; instead, they opened their throttles to pick up more speed in their dive, some of them going so far as to reach 300 knots. Surely, by now the enemy sailors down below must've heard the terrifying war cries of the incoming Corsairs: the howling of Double Wasp radial engines, as well as the high, whining shriek that had given the F4U its nickname amongst the Japanese —  _the Whistling Death._  Enemy anti-air fire had doubled by the time they'd closed to half a mile, but by then the rate of closure was too great.

Jesse never let his sight leave his target, all the while maintaining awareness of his spatial orientation with regards to the other Corsairs so as to not collide. Finally, at half a mile's distance from the ship, Jesse pulled the trigger and opened fire, with Cowboy following suit shortly after. The six heavy-caliber machine guns mounted on his screaming Corsair's wings opened up, gun smoke trailing behind the wings as it spat a hailstorm of .50-caliber bullets. Armor-piercing incendiary and tracer rounds lit up the sky like whips of flame as they slammed into the wooden ship, ripping apart sails, masts, and rigging.

Jesse held down the trigger for a good three seconds before pulling up and out of his dive. He glanced over his shoulder to see the other Corsairs following him back up. Down below, fourteen Dominion ships had either been reduced to burning, sinking hulks, or left dead in the water with torn sails and felled masts. Even if the Dominion sailors could put out the flames, there would be no more maneuvering for them. Over the line, he heard Cowboy whoop cheerfully. "Like shootin' fish in a barrel! They don't stand a chance!"

When the final Corsair had cleared the area, the American ships finally attacked. At two miles' distance, their heavy naval cannons were still well within effective range. A chorus of booms echoed across the ocean surface, a symphony of destruction heralding the arrival of the Dominion's impending doom. Dirty orange blossoms bloomed and geysers of seawater erupted amongst all the ships, instantly disintegrating a dozen of them in the opening volley and critically damaging several more due to shrapnel.

The Dominion ships tried firing back, but none of their weapons had the range to match the American cannons, shooting them from beyond the horizon. Their fireballs, lightning bolts, and arcane trebuchets all fell short or dissipated across the immense distance. More cannon fire answered their attack, and a dozen more ships were reduced to flaming splinters.

At last, the Corsair squadron turned as one, banking hard to initiate another attack vector on the Dominion ships. They entered another screaming dive, filling the air with the howls of their Double Wasp engines and the roar of .50-caliber heavy machine guns. Firing en masse, they subjected the Dominion ships to another hailstorm of tracers and incendiary rounds. Another strafing run, another fourteen ships sunk or crippled.

 _Good thing we decided against bringing ordnance,_  Jesse thought as he and his fellow pilots pulled up out of their dive again, allowing the Americans to unleash their next cannon volley. The ocean surface lit up with fiery conflagrations and geysers of seawater, sending a score of Dominion ships to the depths.  _This is overkill enough as it is._

The Dominion had already lost about seventy percent of its fleet, and it hadn't even made contact with their enemy, still over a mile away. It was then that they finally seemed to realize that they weren't going to survive the attack, and began turning away from the island to retreat. Seeing this, the Corsairs quickly banked around for their third strafing run. Jesse picked out his target and bored in towards it, ready to pull the trigger again — only for it, along with the rest of the fleet's ships, to disappear.

" _What the hell?"_  shouted Jesse, eyes wide. " _The bastards are gone!"_

" _Oh, they ain't gone, Rook,"_ he heard Cowboy reply over the line. " _Them fuckers've gone invisible, but they're still where they were a few seconds ago."_

Next to come over the line was the flight leader, Lightning.  _"The ships are invisible, but they're still leaving wakes in the water! Aim for them and start squirting away!"_

Jesse was only half a mile away from the ocean surface and closing fast. He quickly spotted what looked like a ship's wake, adjusted the rudder to nudge the nose in the right direction, and started firing. He watched the red tracer rounds fly into the ocean, kicking up seawater, and adjusted his aim again. The shots went higher, and this time, he hit his mark: there was a flash as the invisible wooden ship was ignited by his incendiary rounds, and after another second of firing the ship lost its invisibility cloak, revealing the burning, sinking hulk.

" _Lit 'em up like a Christmas tree!"_  Jesse crowed as he pulled back up. Some of the other Corsairs had similar luck. Several more ships were ignited and revealed, though only about seven of them were left behind this time around. The fighter pilot expected to hear the rumbling thunder of heavy cannons again, but this time the Americans held their fire.

Jesse wondered how they were going to fire upon invisible targets, and the answer came quickly. The invisible retreating Dominion ships suddenly reappeared on the ocean surface, sails billowing. A heartbeat later, a line of fifty Imperial galleasses appeared out from nowhere, facing the retreating ships and blocking their escape.

Without warning, the Imperials opened up with everything they had, unleashing a storm of fireballs, lightning bolts, ballista fire, and trebuchet stones. At that close range, nearly everything they fired hit its mark. The Dominion ships fell in droves, unable to sustain such heavy firepower. A few of them managed to fire back, but not even the aetheric fire from their arcane trebuchets succeeded in sinking anything.

By the time the Corsairs had even reached them again, all twenty of the remaining enemy ships had been sunk. Jesse watched impassively as the final Dominion ship was swallowed by dark seawater, before speaking over the squadron line: "Good shootin', men. They're hanging with Davy Jones now — or whatever the natives' equivalent is."

" _Told you they didn't stand a chance,"_  another pilot crowed over the line.

" _Sure as hell more fun than anything we did back on Peleliu,"_ a third commented.

The flight leader's voice finally came over the radio. " _Great work out here, boys. Looks like our job is done — return to the carrier."_

As one, the flight of F4U's turned back towards the  _USS Hollandia,_  watching as the American ships below moved to hopefully claim their prize amongst the flotsam and wreckage left in the water.


End file.
